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Blockchain is rapidly emerging as an important class of network application, with a unique set of trust, security and transparency properties. In a blockchain system, participants record and update the `server-side' state of an application…
Proof of work cryptocurrencies began with the promise of a more egalitarian future with a decentralized monetary system with no powerful entities in charge. While this vision is far from realized, these cryptocurrencies are still touted to…
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…
This paper presents a fully coupled blockchain-assisted federated learning architecture that effectively eliminates single points of failure by decentralizing both the training and aggregation tasks across all participants. Our proposed…
Most permissionless blockchain networks run on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which offer flexibility and decentralization at the expense of performance (e.g., network latency). Historically, this tradeoff has not been a bottleneck for most…
Mining fairness in blockchain refers to equality between the computational resources invested in mining and the block rewards received. There exists a dilemma wherein increasing the transaction processing capacity of a blockchain…
In this paper, we identify a new form of attack, called the Balance attack, against proof-of-work blockchain systems. The novelty of this attack consists of delaying network communications between multiple subgroups of nodes with balanced…
Forks in the Bitcoin network result from the natural competition in the blockchain's Proof-of-Work consensus protocol. Their frequency is a critical indicator for the efficiency of a distributed ledger as they can contribute to resource…
All public blockchains are secured by a proof of opportunity cost among block producers. For example, the security offered by proof-of-work (PoW) systems, like Bitcoin, is due to spent computation; it is work precisely because it cannot be…
A key performance metric in blockchains is the latency between when a transaction is broadcast and when it is confirmed (the so-called, confirmation latency). While improvements in consensus techniques can lead to lower confirmation…
Mining in proof-of-work blockchains has become an expensive affair requiring specialized hardware capable of executing several megahashes per second at huge electricity costs. Miners earn a reward each time they mine a block within the…
Blockchain is based on a P2P network, supporting decentralized consensus of current cryptocurrencies. Since bitcoin and altcoins all utilize an underlying blockchain, they are therefore greatly affected by the performance of the P2P…
As distributed ledgers, blockchains run consensus protocols which trade capacity for consistency, especially in non-ideal networks with incomplete connectivity and erroneous links. Existing studies on the tradeoff between capacity and…
Due to the increasing interest in blockchain technology for fostering secure, auditable, decentralized applications, a set of challenges associated with this technology need to be addressed. In this letter, we focus on the delay associated…
Blockchains rely on a consensus among participants to achieve decentralization and security. However, reaching consensus in an online, digital world where identities are not tied to physical users is a challenging problem. Proof-of-work…
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…
Blockchain plays a crucial role in ensuring the security and integrity of decentralized systems, with the proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism being fundamental for achieving distributed consensus. As PoW blockchains see broader adoption, an…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) systems face critical challenges, including excessive energy consumption and the centralization of mining power among entities with expensive hardware. Static mining pools exacerbate these issues by reducing competition…
While blockchains initially gained popularity in the realm of cryptocurrencies, their widespread adoption is expanding beyond conventional applications, driven by the imperative need for enhanced data security. Despite providing a secure…
This paper opts to mitigate the energy-inefficiency of the Blockchain Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm by rationally repurposing the power spent during the mining process. The original PoW mining scheme is designed to consider one…