Related papers: Proof-of-randomness protocol for blockchain consen…
High quality random numbers are necessary in the modern world. Ranging from encryption keys in cyber security to models and simulations for scientific use: it's important that these random numbers are of high quality and quickly attainable.…
Fair exchange protocols let two mutually distrustful parties exchange digital data in a way that neither party can cheat. They have various applications such as the exchange of digital items, or the exchange of digital coins and digital…
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…
The consensus protocol is a critical component of distributed ledgers and blockchains. Achieving consensus over a decentralized network poses challenges to transaction finality and performance. Currently, the highest-performing consensus…
Low transaction throughput and poor scalability are significant issues in public blockchain consensus protocols such as Bitcoins. Recent research efforts in this direction have proposed shard-based consensus protocols where the key idea is…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus is traditionally analyzed under the assumption that all miners incur similar costs per unit of computational effort. In reality, costs vary due to factors such as regional electricity cost differences and…
The problem of peer selection, which randomly selects a peer from a set, is commonplace in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols. In PoS, peers are chosen randomly with probability proportional to the amount of stake that they possess. This paper…
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…
Security analysis of blockchain technology is an active domain of research. There has been both cryptographic and game-theoretic security analysis of Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains. Prominent work includes the cryptographic security…
Generative AI models, such as GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion, have demonstrated powerful and disruptive capabilities in natural language and image tasks. However, deploying these models in decentralized environments remains challenging. Unlike…
Bitcoin uses blockchain technology and proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism where nodes spend computing resources and earn rewards in return for spending these resources. This incentive system has caused power to be significantly biased towards a…
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…
Decentralisation is one of the promises introduced by blockchain technologies: fair and secure interaction amongst peers with no dominant positions, single points of failure or censorship. Decentralisation, however, appears difficult to be…
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…
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…
This thesis introduces a formal general framework for scaling blockchain protocols by sharding. The framework is modular and it can be adjusted for different needs or sets of assumptions. We prove that sharded protocols obtained by…
In this paper, we propose two models for scaling the transaction throughput in Proof-of-Work (PoW) based blockchain networks. In the first approach, a mathematical model has derived for optimal transaction throughput for PoW based longest…
The property of proportional representation in approval-based committee elections has appeared in the social choice literature for over a century, and is typically understood as avoiding the underrepresentation of minorities. However, we…
Even if the output of a Random Number Generator (RNG) is perfectly uniformly distributed, it may be correlated to pre-existing information and therefore be predictable. Statistical tests are thus not sufficient to guarantee that an RNG is…
This paper is concerned with the stability of shares in a cryptocurrency where the new coins are issued according to the Proof of Stake protocol. We identify large, medium and small investors under various rewarding schemes, and show that…