Related papers: Generic Selfish Mining MDP for DAG Protocols
Blockchains rely on a consensus among participants to achieve decentralization and security. However, reaching consensus in an online, digital world where identities are not tied to physical users is a challenging problem. Proof-of-work…
Recent developments in differentially private (DP) machine learning and DP Bayesian learning have enabled learning under strong privacy guarantees for the training data subjects. In this paper, we further extend the applicability of DP…
As cross-chain technologies make the interactions among different blockchains (hereinafter "chains") possible, multi-chains consensus is becoming more and more important in blockchain networks. However, more attention has been paid to the…
We propose a new, more potent attack on decentralized exchanges. This attack leverages absolute commitments, which are commitments that can condition on the strategies made by other agents. This attack allows an adversary to charge monopoly…
Probabilistic model checking is a useful technique for specifying and verifying properties of stochastic systems including randomized protocols and reinforcement learning models. Existing methods rely on the assumed structure and…
We present a new geometric interpretation of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with a natural normalization procedure that allows us to adjust the value function at each state without altering the advantage of any action with respect to any…
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a popular model for performance analysis and optimization of stochastic systems. The parameters of stochastic behavior of MDPs are estimates from empirical observations of a system; their values are not…
This paper aims to provide differential privacy (DP) guarantees for Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. In a first part, we establish DP guarantees on samples output by MCMC algorithms as well as Monte Carlo estimators associated…
Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) refers to a class of attacks to decentralized applications where the adversary profits by manipulating the ordering, inclusion, or exclusion of transactions in a blockchain. Decentralized Finance (DeFi)…
Blockchains use consensus protocols to reach agreement, e.g., on the ordering of transactions. DAG-based consensus protocols are increasingly adopted by blockchain companies to reduce energy consumption and enhance security. These protocols…
Transaction ordering attacks extract billions of dollars annually from decentralized finance users in the form of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols guarantee total order but place no…
We propose DIPS Difficulty-based Incentives for Problem Solving), a simple modification of the Bitcoin proof-of-work algorithm that rewards blockchain miners for solving optimization problems of scientific interest. The result is a…
We analyze Bitcoin mining from the perspective of a game and propose an optimal mining model that maximizes profits of pools and miners. The model is a two-stage Stackelberg game in which each stage forms a sub-game. In stage I, pools are…
A Tree Markov Decision Problem (T-MDP) is a finite-horizon MDP with a starting state $s_{1}$, in which every state is reachable from $s_{1}$ through exactly one state-action trajectory. T-MDPs arise naturally as abstractions of decision…
Authorization is challenging in distributed systems that cannot rely on the identification of nodes. Proof-of-work offers an alternative gate-keeping mechanism, but its probabilistic nature is incompatible with conventional security…
This paper studies the computation of robust deterministic policies for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in the Lightning Does Not Strike Twice (LDST) model of Mannor, Mebel and Xu (ICML '12). In this model, designed to provide robustness…
The NPM ecosystem has become a primary target for software supply chain attacks, yet existing detection tools are evaluated in isolation on incompatible datasets, making cross-tool comparison unreliable. We conduct a benchmark-driven…
The Ethereum blockchain utilizes the EIP-1559 algorithm to manage transaction inclusion and block assembly. However, EIP-1559 and much of the existing literature study this problem from a static perspective, focusing on price evolution…
We study differentially private (DP) algorithms for smooth stochastic minimax optimization, with stochastic minimization as a byproduct. The holy grail of these settings is to guarantee the optimal trade-off between the privacy and the…
Cloud infrastructures are being increasingly utilized in critical infrastructures such as banking/finance, transportation and utility management. Sophistication and resources used in recent security breaches including those on critical…