Related papers: Optimality Despite Chaos in Fee Markets
Abrupt changes in the miner hash rate applied to a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain can adversely affect user experience and security. Because different PoW blockchains often share hashing algorithms, miners face a complex choice in deciding…
Blockchains are widely used for secure transaction processing, but their scalability remains limited, and existing multichain designs are typically static even as demand and capacity shift. We cast blockchain configuration as a multiagent…
This paper presents a comprehensive framework for transaction posting and pricing in Layer 2 (L2) blockchain systems, focusing on challenges stemming from fluctuating Layer 1 (L1) gas fees and the congestion issues within L2 networks.…
Payment channels are the most prominent solution to the blockchain scalability problem. We introduce the problem of network design with fees for payment channels from the perspective of a Payment Service Provider (PSP). Given a set of…
We model the ultimate price paid by users of a decentralized ledger as resulting from a two-stage game where Miners (/Proposers/etc.) first purchase blockspace via a Tullock contest, and then price that space to users. When analyzing our…
The Ethereum platform allows developers to implement and deploy applications called Dapps onto the blockchain for public use through the use of smart contracts. To execute code within a smart contract, a paid transaction must be issued…
The blockchain paradigm provides a mechanism for content dissemination and distributed consensus on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. While this paradigm has been widely adopted in industry, it has not been carefully analyzed in terms of its…
As a fundraising method, Initial Coin Offering (ICO) has raised billions of dollars for thousands of startups in the past two years. Existing ICO mechanisms place more emphasis on the short-term benefits of maximal fundraising while…
The mining of bitcoin is modeled using system dynamics, showing that the past evolution of the network hash rate can be explained to a large extent by an efficient market hypothesis applied to the mining of blocks. The possibility of a…
Blockchain protocols often seek to procure computationally challenging work from a decentralized set of participants. While there are simple procurement auctions that result in the minimal cost of acquisition and maximal efficiency, they…
We use historical data to estimate the potential benefit of speculative techniques for executing Ethereum smart contracts in parallel. We replay transaction traces of sampled blocks from the Ethereum blockchain over time, using a simple…
As a trusted middleware connecting the blockchain and the real world, the blockchain oracle can obtain trusted real-time price information for financial applications such as payment and settlement, and asset valuation on the blockchain.…
Public blockchains have spurred the growing popularity of decentralized transactions and smart contracts, but they exhibit limitations on the transaction throughput, storage, and computation. To avoid transaction gridlock, public…
Blockchain systems often employ proof-of-work consensus protocols to validate and add transactions into hashchains. These protocols stimulate competition among miners in solving cryptopuzzles (e.g. SHA-256 hash computation in Bitcoin) in…
Although Bitcoin was intended to be a decentralized digital currency, in practice, mining power is quite concentrated. This fact is a persistent source of concern for the Bitcoin community. We provide an explanation using a simple model to…
As distributed ledgers, blockchains run consensus protocols which trade capacity for consistency, especially in non-ideal networks with incomplete connectivity and erroneous links. Existing studies on the tradeoff between capacity and…
We consider a trading marketplace that is populated by traders with diverse trading strategies and objectives. The marketplace allows the suppliers to list their goods and facilitates matching between buyers and sellers. In return, such a…
As an emerging technology, blockchain has achieved great success in numerous application scenarios, from intelligent healthcare to smart cities. However, a long-standing bottleneck hindering its further development is the massive resource…
Classical optimal auction theory assumes that bids reach the seller directly. We study how this picture changes when a revenue-maximizing intermediary controls access to the seller's auction. Motivated by blockchain auctions, online…
We study selfish mining attacks in longest-chain blockchains like Bitcoin, but where the proof of work is replaced with efficient proof systems -- like proofs of stake or proofs of space -- and consider the problem of computing an optimal…