Related papers: Bitcoin: a new Proof-of-Work system with reduced v…
We study decentralized cryptocurrency protocols in which the participants do not deplete physical scarce resources. Such protocols commonly rely on Proof of Stake, i.e., on mechanisms that extend voting power to the stakeholders of the…
Blockchain systems face persistent challenges of scalability, latency, and energy inefficiency. Existing consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) either consume excessive resources or risk centralization.…
We present a strategy for a single quantum miner with relatively low hashing power, with the same ramifications as a 51% attack. Bitcoin nodes consider the chain with the highest cumulative proof-of-work to be the valid chain. A quantum…
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…
Since the invention of Bitcoin one decade ago, numerous cryptocurrencies have sprung into existence. Among these, proof-of-work is the most common mechanism for achieving consensus, whilst a number of coins have adopted "ASIC-resistance" as…
Mining for Bitcoins is a high-risk high-reward activity. Miners, seeking to reduce their variance and earn steadier rewards, collaborate in pooling strategies where they jointly mine for Bitcoins. Whenever some pool participant is…
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a public log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the distributed protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called miners. Conventional wisdom…
The distributed consensus mechanism is the backbone of the rapidly developing blockchain network. Blockchain platforms consume vast amounts of electricity based on the current consensus mechanism of Proof of Work. Here, we point out an…
Most popular blockchain solutions, like Bitcoin, rely on proof-of-work, guaranteeing that the output of the consensus is agreed upon with high probability. However, this probability depends on the delivery of messages and that the…
Proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency blockchains like Bitcoin secure vast amounts of money. Their operators, called miners, expend resources to generate blocks and receive monetary rewards for their effort. Blockchains are, in principle,…
Proof-of-work(PoW) is an algorithmic tool used to secure networks by imposing a computational cost on participating devices. Unfortunately, traditional PoW schemes require that correct devices perform significant computational work in…
With the increasing adoption of the Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain, it is timely to study the economy created by such blockchain. In this chapter, we will survey recent progress on the trading and wealth evolution in a cryptocurrency where…
The blockchain data structure maintained via the longest-chain rule---popularized by Bitcoin---is a powerful algorithmic tool for consensus algorithms. Such algorithms achieve consistency for blocks in the chain as a function of their depth…
Resource-based consensus is the backbone of permissionless distributed ledger systems. The security of such protocols relies fundamentally on the level of resources actively engaged in the system. The variety of different resources (and…
Blockchain as a promising technology is gaining its popularity ever since proof-of-work based Bitcoin came to the world. Nevertheless, Bitcoin achieves consensus at an expensive cost of energy. Proof-of-stake is one of the solutions for…
We introduce Unity Interleave, a new consensus algorithm for public blockchain settings. It is an eventual consistency protocol merging the Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) into a coherent stochastic process. It builds upon…
This paper introduces BlockReduce, a Proof-of-Work (PoW) based blockchain system which achieves high transaction throughput through a hierarchy of merged mined blockchains, each operating in parallel on a partition the overall application…
Proof-of-work allows Bitcoin to boast security amidst arbitrary fluctuations in participation of miners throughout time, so long as, at any point in time, a majority of hash power is honest. In recent years, however, the pendulum has…
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), when managed by a few trusted validators, require most but not all of the machinery available in public DLTs. In this work, we explore one possible way to profit from this state of affairs. We devise…
We propose a proof-of-work algorithm that rewards blockchain miners for using computational resources to solve NP-complete puzzles. The resulting blockchain will publicly store and improve solutions to problems with real world applications…