Related papers: Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrencies: Does Mining Techno…
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…
Bitcoin and Ethereum, whose miners arguably collectively comprise the most powerful computational resource in the history of mankind, offer no more power for processing and verifying transactions than a typical smart phone. The system…
In a Proof-of-Work blockchain such as Bitcoin mining hashrate is increasing in the block reward. An increase in hashrate reduces network vulnerability to attack (a reduction in security cost) while increasing carbon emissions and…
Liquid staking has become the largest category of decentralized finance protocols in terms of total value locked. However, few studies exist on its implementation designs or underlying risks. The liquid staking protocols allow for earning…
In recent years decentralized currencies developed through Blockchains are increasingly becoming popular because of their transparent nature and absence of a central controlling authority. Though a lot of computation power, disk space, and…
We study the strategic implications that arise from adding one extra option to the miners participating in the bitcoin protocol. We propose that when adding a block, miners also have the ability to pay forward an amount to be collected by…
In the context of blockchain systems, the importance of decentralization is undermined by the lack of a widely accepted methodology to measure it. To address this gap, we set out a systematization effort targeting the decentralization…
Many protocols in distributed computing rely on a source of randomness, usually called a random beacon, both for their applicability and security. This is especially true for proof-of-stake blockchain protocols in which the next miner or…
While Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the most widely used consensus mechanism for blockchain, it received harsh criticism due to its massive waste of energy for meaningless hash calculation. Some studies have introduced Proof-of-Stake to address…
This paper studies to what extent the cost of operating a proof-of-work blockchain is intrinsically linked to the cost of preventing attacks, and to what extent the underlying digital ledger security budgets are correlated with the…
Bitcoin is the first fully-decentralized permissionless blockchain protocol to achieve a high level of security, but at the expense of poor throughput and latency. Scaling the performance of Bitcoin has a been a major recent direction of…
We present an analysis of the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, used on the Bitcoin blockchain, using a Mean Field Game framework. Using a master equation, we provide an equilibrium characterization of the total computational power devoted…
More than ten years ago the blockchain was acclaimed as the solution to overcome centralised trusted third parties for online payments. Through the years the crypto-movement changed and evolved, although decentralisation remained the core…
The protocol for cryptocurrencies can be divided into three parts, namely consensus, wallet, and networking overlay. The aim of the consensus part is to bring trustless rational peer-to-peer nodes to an agreement to the current status of…
Proof-of-stake (PoS) has emerged as a natural alternative to the resource-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain, as was recently seen with the Ethereum Merge. PoS-based blockchains require an initial stake distribution among the…
Proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies rely on a balance of security and fairness in order to maintain a sustainable ecosystem of miners and users. Users demand fast and consistent transaction confirmation, and in exchange drive the adoption…
Given the parallels between game theory and consensus, it makes sense to intelligently design blockchain or DAG protocols with an incentive-compatible-first mentality. To that end, we propose a new blockchain or DAG protocol enhancement…
In proof-of-work based blockchains such as Ethereum, verification of blocks is an integral part of establishing consensus across nodes. However, in Ethereum, miners do not receive a reward for verifying. This implies that miners face the…
Over the past five years, the rewards associated with mining Proof-of-Work blockchains have increased substantially. As a result, miners are heavily incentivized to design and utilize Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) that…
The security of blockchain systems is fundamentally based on the decentralized consensus in which the majority of parties behave honestly, and the content verification process is essential to maintaining the robustness of blockchain…