Related papers: Payment Does Not Imply Consensus (For Distributed …
Payment channel networks are an approach to improve the scalability of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. The Lightning Network is a payment channel network built for Bitcoin that is already used in practice. Because the Lightning Network…
Bitcoin is undoubtedly a great alternative to today's existing digital payment systems. Even though Bitcoin's scalability has been debated for a long time, we see that it is no longer a concern thanks to its layer-2 solution Lightning…
Heretofore the concept of "blockchain" has not been precisely defined. Accordingly the potential useful applications of this technology have been largely inflated. This work sidesteps the question of what constitutes a blockchain as such…
Modern blockchain systems are a fresh look at the paradigm of distributed computing, applied under assumptions of large-scale public networks. They can be used to store and share information without a trusted central party. There has been…
In the Bitcoin system, transaction fees serve as an incentive for blockchain confirmations. In general, a transaction with a higher fee is likely to be included in the next block mined, whereas a transaction with a smaller fee or no fee may…
To improve transaction rates, many cryptocurrencies have implemented so-called ''Layer-2'' transaction protocols, where payments are routed across networks of private payment channels. However, for a given transaction, not every network…
Throughput limitations of existing blockchain architectures are one of the most significant hurdles for their wide-spread adoption. Attempts to address this challenge include layer-2 solutions, such as Bitcoin's Lightning or Ethereum's…
Bitcoin (BTC) is probably the most transparent payment network in the world, thanks to the full history of transactions available to the public. Though, Bitcoin is not a fully anonymous environment, rather a pseudonymous one, accounting for…
Off-chain transaction channels represent one of the leading techniques to scale the transaction throughput in cryptocurrencies. However, the economic effect of transaction channels on the system has not been explored much until now. We…
Consensus is one of the most fundamental distributed computing problems. In particular, it serves as a building block in many replication based fault-tolerant systems and in particular in multiple recent blockchain solutions. Depending on…
Consensus protocols used today in blockchains often rely on computational power or financial stakes - scarce resources. We propose a novel protocol using social capital - trust and influence from social interactions - as a non-transferable…
Consensus is arguably one of the most important notions in distributed computing. Among asynchronous, randomized, and signature-free implementations, the protocols of Most\'efaoui et al. (PODC 2014 and JACM 2015) represent a landmark…
Transaction fee mechanism design is a new decentralized mechanism design problem where users bid for space on the blockchain. Several recent works showed that the transaction fee mechanism design fundamentally departs from classical…
This paper presents a comprehensive refutation of the so-called "blockchain trilemma," a widely cited but formally ungrounded claim asserting an inherent trade-off between decentralisation, security, and scalability in blockchain protocols.…
A blockchain system is a replicated state machine that must be fault tolerant. When designing a blockchain system, there is usually a trade-off between decentralization, scalability, and security. In this paper, we propose a novel…
A payment channel network is a blockchain-based overlay mechanism that allows parties to transact more efficiently than directly using the blockchain. These networks are composed of payment channels that carry transactions between pairs of…
We model the ultimate price paid by users of a decentralized ledger as resulting from a two-stage game where Miners (/Proposers/etc.) first purchase blockspace via a Tullock contest, and then price that space to users. When analyzing our…
Blockchain offers a decentralized, immutable, transparent system of records. It offers a peer-to-peer network of nodes with no centralised governing entity making it unhackable and therefore, more secure than the traditional paper-based or…
Blockchain is a type of decentralized distributed database. Unlike traditional relational database management systems, it does not require management or maintenance by a third party. All data management and update processes are open and…
A blockchain is a decentralized ledger where all transactions are recorded. For having a reliable blockchain and double-spending prevention, we need a decentralized consensus and agreement on a blockchain. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work (PoW).…