Related papers: Staking Pools on Blockchains
Proof-of-stake blockchain protocols have emerged as a compelling paradigm for organizing distributed ledger systems. In proof-of-stake (PoS), a subset of stakeholders participate in validating a growing ledger of transactions. For the…
Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain systems, especially those that allow stakeholders to organize themselves in ``stake-pools'', have emerged as a compelling paradigm for the deployment of large scale distributed ledgers. A stake-pool operates…
We study a game-theoretic model for pool formation in Proof of Stake blockchain protocols. In such systems, stakeholders can form pools as a means of obtaining regular rewards from participation in ledger maintenance, with the power of each…
This paper examines the economic and security implications of Proof-of-Stake (POS) designs, providing a survey of POS design choices and their underlying economic principles in prominent POS-blockchains. The paper argues that…
We introduce and study reward sharing schemes (RSS) that promote the fair formation of {\em stake pools}\ in collaborative projects that involve a large number of stakeholders such as the maintenance of a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.…
Proof of Stake (PoS) protocols rely on voting mechanisms to reach consensus on the current state. If an enhanced majority of staking nodes, also called validators, agree on a proposed block, then this block is appended to the blockchain.…
The resource-consuming mining of blocks on a blockchain equipped with a proof of work consensus protocol bears the risk of ruin, namely when the operational costs for the mining exceed the received rewards. In this paper we investigate to…
Many blockchain-based decentralized services require their validators (operators) to deposit stake (collateral), which is forfeited (slashed) if they misbehave. Restaking networks let validators secure multiple services by reusing stake.…
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…
Proof-of-stake (PoS) is a promising approach for designing efficient blockchains, where block proposers are randomly chosen with probability proportional to their stake. A primary concern with PoS systems is the "rich getting richer"…
Permissionless Proof-of-Stake (PoS) economic security is predicated on the high cost of violating consensus safety or liveness. We show that liquid staking introduces additional risks that are not captured by standard PoS economic security…
As smart contract platforms autonomously manage billions of dollars of capital, quantifying the portfolio risk that investors engender in these systems is increasingly important. Recent work illustrates that Proof of Stake (PoS) is…
This paper presents a novel staking coopetition design aimed at incentivizing decentralization and continuous growth of economic security within a proof-of-stake system. Staking rewards follow a nonlinear mapping relative to stake size.…
An open distributed system can be secured by requiring participants to present proof of work and rewarding them for participation. The Bitcoin digital currency introduced this mechanism, which is adopted by almost all contemporary digital…
This paper proposes a conceptual framework for the analysis of reward sharing schemes in mining pools, such as those associated with Bitcoin. The framework is centered around the reported shares in a pool instead of agents and results in…
Proof of Stake (PoS) is a burgeoning Sybil resistance mechanism that aims to have a digital asset ("token") serve as security collateral in crypto networks. However, PoS has so far eluded a comprehensive threat model that encompasses both…
The idea of security sharing goes back to Nakamoto's introduction of merge mining, a technique that enables Bitcoin miners to reuse their hash power to bootstrap and secure other Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains. However, with the rise of…
Blockchain systems, such as Ethereum, are increasingly adopting layer-2 scaling solutions to improve transaction throughput and reduce fees. One popular layer-2 approach is the Optimistic Rollup, which relies on a mechanism known as a…
We study game-theoretic models for capturing participation in blockchain systems. Permissionless blockchains can be naturally viewed as games, where a set of potentially interested users is faced with the dilemma of whether to engage with…
Blockchain, which is a technology for distributedly managing ledger information over multiple nodes without a centralized system, has elicited increasing attention. Performing experiments on actual blockchains are difficult because a large…