Related papers: Ethereum's Proposer-Builder Separation: Promises a…
Permissionless blockchains promise to be resilient against censorship by a single entity. This suggests that deterministic rules, and not third-party actors, are responsible for deciding if a transaction is appended to the blockchain or…
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"…
Current blockchain consensus protocols -- notably, Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) -- deliver global agreement but exhibit structural constraints. PoW anchors security in heavy computation, inflating energy use and imposing…
We analyze the economic incentives generated by the proof-of-stake mechanism discussed in the Ethereum Casper upgrade proposal. Compared with proof-of-work, proof-of-stake has a different cost structure for attackers. In Budish (2018),…
Consensus algorithms facilitate agreement on and resolution of blockchain functions, such as smart contracts and transactions. Ethereum uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which depends on financial incentives to ensure that…
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…
With the increasing adoption of decentralized information systems based on a variety of permissionless blockchain networks, the choice of consensus mechanism is at the core of many controversial discussions. Ethereum's recent transition…
Popular Ethereum wallets (like MetaMask) entrust centralized infrastructure providers (e.g., Infura) to run the consensus client logic on their behalf. As a result, these wallets are light-weight and high-performant, but come with security…
Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is a prominent Sybil control mechanism for blockchain-based systems. In "e-PoS: Making PoS Decentralized and Fair," Saad et al. (TPDS'21) introduced a new Proof-of-Stake protocol, e-PoS, to enhance PoS applications'…
Blockchain applications that rely on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) have increasingly become energy inefficient with a staggering carbon footprint. In contrast, energy-efficient alternative consensus protocols such as Proof-of-Stake (PoS) may…
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…
Blockchain systems that settle financial transactions face a structural tension: the single validator that assembles each block holds unilateral power over transaction inclusion and ordering. Traditional markets curb this very power through…
The advent of Ethereum 2.0 has introduced significant changes, particularly the shift to Proof-of-Stake consensus. This change presents new opportunities and challenges for arbitrage. Amidst these changes, we introduce BriDe Arbitrager, a…
Censorship resistance is one of the core value proposition of blockchains. A recurring design pattern aimed at providing censorship resistance is enabling multiple proposers to contribute inputs into block construction. Notably, Fork-Choice…
A hard-fork reconfiguration of the peer to peer Bitcoin network is described that substitutes tamper-evident logs and proof-of-stake consensus for proof-of-work consensus. The block creation rewards and transaction fees are reallocated to…
Ethereum represents new innovation in the fields of cryptocurrency which has become relatively stagnate, promising many things, including an entire programming language and development enviroment built into the network. However the current…
We study the impact of the order flow auction (OFA) in the context of the proposer-builder separation (PBS) mechanism in blockchains through a game-theoretic perspective. The OFA is designed to improve user welfare by redistributing maximal…
Ethereum is undergoing significant changes to its architecture as it evolves. These changes include its switch to PoS consensus and the introduction of significant infrastructural changes that do not require a change to the core protocol,…
In blockchain, bribery is an inevitable problem since users with various goals can bribe miners by transferring cryptoassets. To alleviate the negative effects of such collusion, Ethereum blockchain implemented new transaction fee mechanism…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a popular consensus protocol used by Bitcoin since its inception. PoW has the well-known flaw of assigning all the reward to the single miner (or pool) that inserts the new block. This has the consequence of making…