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A proof of work (PoW) blockchain protocol distributes rewards to its participants, called miners, according to their share of the total computational power. Sufficiently large miners can perform selfish mining - deviate from the protocol to…
Numerical security proofs based on conic optimization are known to deliver optimal secret-key rates, but so far they have mostly assumed that the emitted states are fully characterized. In practice, this assumption is unrealistic, since…
We determine the computational complexity of approximately counting and sampling independent sets of a given size in bounded-degree graphs. That is, we identify a critical density $\alpha_c(\Delta)$ and provide (i) for $\alpha <…
In dynamic programming and reinforcement learning, the policy for the sequential decision making of an agent in a stochastic environment is usually determined by expressing the goal as a scalar reward function and seeking a policy that…
We analyze a class of distributed quantized consen- sus algorithms for arbitrary networks. In the initial setting, each node in the network has an integer value. Nodes exchange their current estimate of the mean value in the network, and…
Addressing uncertainty is critical for autonomous systems to robustly adapt to the real world. We formulate the problem of model uncertainty as a continuous Bayes-Adaptive Markov Decision Process (BAMDP), where an agent maintains a…
Requirements driven search-based testing (also known as falsification) has proven to be a practical and effective method for discovering erroneous behaviors in Cyber-Physical Systems. Despite the constant improvements on the performance and…
In a delegation problem, a principal P with commitment power tries to pick one out of $n$ options. Each option is drawn independently from a known distribution. Instead of inspecting the options herself, P delegates the information…
In this article, we propose a new approach, optimize then agree for minimizing a sum $ f = \sum_{i=1}^n f_i(x)$ of convex objective functions over a directed graph. The optimize then agree approach decouples the optimization step and the…
Protocols for distributed quantum systems commonly require the simultaneous availability of $n$ entangled states, each with a fidelity above some fixed minimum $F_{\mathrm{app}}$ relative to the target maximally-entangled state. However,…
Cryptographic primitives have been used for various non-cryptographic objectives, such as eliminating or reducing randomness and interaction. We show how to use cryptography to improve the time complexity of solving computational problems.…
In the Markov decision process model, policies are usually evaluated by expected cumulative rewards. As this decision criterion is not always suitable, we propose in this paper an algorithm for computing a policy optimal for the quantile…
Many interventions, such as vaccines in clinical trials or coupons in online marketplaces, must be assigned sequentially without full knowledge of their effects. Multi-armed bandit algorithms have proven successful in such settings.…
We introduce stochastic decision Petri nets (SDPNs), which are a form of stochastic Petri nets equipped with rewards and a control mechanism via the deactivation of controllable transitions. Such nets can be translated into Markov decision…
The Herman Protocol Conjecture states that the expected time $\mathbb{E}(\mathbf{T})$ of Herman's self-stabilizing algorithm in a system consisting of $N$ identical processes organized in a ring holding several tokens is at most…
We consider the problem of solving a distributed optimization problem using a distributed computing platform, where the communication in the network is limited: each node can only communicate with its neighbours and the channel has a…
Online decision making aims to learn the optimal decision rule by making personalized decisions and updating the decision rule recursively. It has become easier than before with the help of big data, but new challenges also come along.…
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…
We present a new protocol and two lower bounds for quantum coin flipping. In our protocol, no dishonest party can achieve one outcome with probability more than 0.75. Then, we show that our protocol is optimal for a certain type of quantum…
We study the sequential decision-making problem of allocating a limited resource to agents that reveal their stochastic demands on arrival over a finite horizon. Our goal is to design fair allocation algorithms that exhaust the available…