Related papers: Modeling Resources in Permissionless Longest-chain…
The blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain record the amount of work W that went into creating them through proofs of work. When honest parties control a majority of the work, consensus is achieved by picking the chain with the highest recorded…
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…
Blockchain is a novel technology that is rising a lot of interest in the industrial and re- search sectors because its properties of decentralisation, immutability and data integrity. Initially, the underlying consensus mechanism has been…
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…
Open-access blockchains based on proof-of-work protocols have gained tremendous popularity for their capabilities of providing decentralized tamper-proof ledgers and platforms for data-driven autonomous organization. Nevertheless, the…
Known as a distributed ledger technology (DLT), blockchain has attracted much attention due to its properties such as decentralization, security, immutability and transparency, and its potential of servicing as an infrastructure for various…
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…
As of July 15, 2023, Ethererum, which is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain [1] has around 410 Billion USD in total assets on chain (popularly referred to as total-value-locked, TVL) but has only 33 Billion USD worth of ETH staked in…
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…
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…
Recently, two attacks were presented against Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Ethereum: one where short-range reorganizations of the underlying consensus chain are used to increase individual validators' profits and delay consensus decisions, and one…
This paper introduces Proof of Team Sprint (PoTS), a novel consensus algorithm designed to address the significant energy inefficiencies inherent in traditional Proof of Work (PoW) systems. PoTS shifts the consensus mechanism from an…
Blockchain consensus is a state whereby each node in a network agrees on the current state of the blockchain. Existing protocols achieve consensus via a contest or voting procedure to select one node as a dictator to propose new blocks.…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a popular blockchain consensus algorithm that is used in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in which hashing operations are repeated until the resulting hash has certain properties. This approach uses lots of computational…
Blockchains have recently gained popularity thanks to their ability to record "digital truth". They are designed to keep persistence, security, and avoid attacks which is useful for many applications. However, they are still problematic in…
Large proof of work (PoW) networks allow anyone to earn rewards by running computation-intensive hash puzzles for profit, yet they typically consume electricity comparable to that of medium-sized countries. Repurposing computing resources…
Blockchain technology and, more generally, distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems, face public scrutiny for their energy consumption levels. However, many point out that high energy consumption is a feature of (small block size)…
As cryptographic tokens and altcoins are increasingly being built to serve as utility tokens, the notion of useful work consensus protocols, as opposed to number-crunching PoW consensus, is becoming ever more important. In such contexts,…
Although proof of work (PoW) consensus dominates the current blockchain-based systems mostly, it has always been criticized for the uneconomic brute-force calculation. As alternatives, energy-conservation and energy-recycling mechanisms…
We present the new mining protocol Proof-of-Reputation (PoR) for decentralized Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains, in particular for Bitcoin. PoR combines the classical PoW with the new ingredient of cryptographic reputation. The same level of…