Related papers: Payment Does Not Imply Consensus (For Distributed …
While the original purpose of blockchains was to realize a payment system, it has been shown that, in fact, such systems do not require consensus and can be implemented deterministically in asynchronous networks. State-of-the-art payment…
In recent years, Byzantine Agreement is being considered in increasing scales due to the proliferation of blockchains and other decentralized financial technologies. Consequently, a number of works have improved its communication complexity…
Bitcoin is the first and the most extensive decentralized electronic cryptocurrency system that uses blockchain technology. It uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) network to operate without a central authority and propagate system information such as…
Payment channel networks (PCNs) such as the Lightning Network offer an appealing solution to the scalability problem faced by many cryptocurrencies operating on a blockchain such as Bitcoin. However, PCNs also inherit the stringent…
The Lightning Network is a so-called second-layer technology built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain to provide "off-chain" fast payment channels between users, which means that not all transactions are settled and stored on the main…
Fault-tolerant consensus has been studied extensively in the literature, because it is one of the most important distributed primitives and has wide applications in practice. This paper surveys important results on fault-tolerant consensus…
Blockchain technologies originate from cryptocurrencies. Thus, most blockchain technologies assume an environment with a fast and stable network. However, in some blockchain-based systems, e.g., supply chain management (SCM) systems, some…
With the large increase in the adoption of blockchain technologies, their underlying peer-to-peer networks must also scale with the demand. In this context, previous works highlighted the importance of ensuring efficient and resilient…
Some of the recent blockchain proposals, such as Stellar and Ripple, allow for open membership while using quorum-like structures typical for classical Byzantine consensus with closed membership. This is achieved by constructing quorums in…
Since the inception of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have attracted an increasing interest from both academia and industry. Among various core components, consensus protocol is the defining technology…
Blockchain has many benefits including decentralization, availability, persistency, consistency, anonymity, auditability and accountability, and it also covers a wide spectrum of applications ranging from cryptocurrency, financial services,…
Cryptocurrencies are distributed systems that allow exchanges of native (and non-) tokens among participants. The complete historical bookkeeping and its wide availability opens up an unprecedented possibility, i.e. that of understanding…
Does the proof-of-work protocol serve its intended purpose of supporting decentralized cryptocurrency mining? To address this question, we develop a game-theoretical model where miners first invest in hardware to improve the efficiency of…
To address the large amount of energy wasted by blockchains, we propose a decentralized consensus protocol for blockchains in which the computation can be used to search for good approximate solutions to any optimization problem. Our…
One of the fundamental applications for a practically useful system of money is remuneration. Information pertaining to the amount of compensation awarded to different individuals is often considered sensitive, commanding a certain degree…
We review probabilistic models known as majority dynamics (also known as threshold Voter Models) and discuss their possible applications for achieving consensus in cryptocurrency systems. In particular, we show that using this approach…
Modular methods to transform Byzantine consensus protocols into ones that are fast and communication efficient in the common cases are presented. Small and short protocol segments called layers are custom designed to optimize performance in…
The Bitcoin Lightning Network is a Layer 2 payment protocol that addresses Bitcoin's scalability by facilitating quick and cost effective transactions through payment channels. This research explores the feasibility of using machine…
Payment channel networks are an approach to improve the scalability of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Because payment channel networks are used for transfer of financial value, their security in the presence of adversarial participants…
Bitcoin mining presents a significant economic incentive for efficient hashing and broadcast of data, both parameters stemming from the Proofs of Work used to advance the network. This incentive has led to the development of Bitcoin…