Related papers: Automated Selfish Mining Analysis for DAG-Based Po…
The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol [GKL15] is an abstraction of the bitcoin proof-of-work consensus protocol. We use a model-checking tool (UPPAALSMC) to examine the concrete security of proof-ofwork consensus by varying protocol parameters and…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a Sybil control mechanism adopted in blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. It prevents the attempt of malicious actors to manipulate distributed ledgers. Bitcoin has successfully suppressed double-spending by accepting…
Battery-less Internet of Things (IoT) devices rely on ambient energy harvesting and therefore require scheduling policies that jointly account for energy intermittency and hard timing constraints. This challenge is especially acute in…
Cryptographic Self-Selection is a subroutine used to select a leader for modern proof-of-stake consensus protocols, such as Algorand. In cryptographic self-selection, each round $r$ has a seed $Q_r$. In round $r$, each account owner is…
We describe the bailout of banks by governments as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) where the actions are equity investments. The underlying dynamics is derived from the network of financial institutions linked by mutual exposures, and the…
In this work, we consider an online robust Markov Decision Process (MDP) where we have the information of finitely many prototypes of the underlying transition kernel. We consider an adaptively updated ambiguity set of the prototypes and…
Robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) provide a general framework to model decision problems where the system dynamics are changing or only partially known. Efficient methods for some \texttt{sa}-rectangular robust MDPs exist, using its…
We study online learning in finite-horizon episodic Markov decision processes (MDPs) under the challenging aggregate bandit feedback model, where the learner observes only the cumulative loss incurred in each episode, rather than individual…
We study and provide efficient algorithms for multi-objective model checking problems for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Given an MDP, M, and given multiple linear-time (\omega -regular or LTL) properties \varphi\_i, and probabilities…
In the context of the `selfish-mine' strategy proposed by Eyal and Sirer, we study the effect of propagation delay on the evolution of the Bitcoin blockchain. First, we use a simplified Markov model that tracks the contrasting states of…
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…
Many cryptocurrency platforms are vulnerable to Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) attacks, where a malicious consensus leader can inject transactions or change the order of user transactions to maximize its profit. A promising line of…
A blockchain is a decentralized ledger where all transactions are recorded. For having a reliable blockchain and double-spending prevention, we need a decentralized consensus and agreement on a blockchain. Bitcoin uses proof-of-work (PoW).…
It is challenging for a security analyst to detect or defend against cyber-attacks. Moreover, traditional defense deployment methods require the security analyst to manually enforce the defenses in the presence of uncertainties about the…
Mining attacks allow adversaries to obtain a disproportionate share of the mining reward by deviating from the honest mining strategy in the Bitcoin system. Among them, the most well-known are selfish mining (SM), block withholding (BWH),…
The selfish mining attack, arguably the most famous game-theoretic attack in blockchain, indicates that the Bitcoin protocol is not incentive-compatible. Most subsequent works mainly focus on strengthening the selfish mining strategy, thus…
We consider (stochastic) softmax policy gradient (PG) methods for bandits and tabular Markov decision processes (MDPs). While the PG objective is non-concave, recent research has used the objective's smoothness and gradient domination…
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) have been used to formulate many decision-making problems in science and engineering. The objective is to synthesize the best decision (action selection) policies to maximize expected rewards (or minimize…
A diagnostic policy specifies what test to perform next, based on the results of previous tests, and when to stop and make a diagnosis. Cost-sensitive diagnostic policies perform tradeoffs between (a) the cost of tests and (b) the cost of…
We consider a class of optimization problems over stochastic variables where the algorithm can learn information about the value of any variable through a series of costly steps; we model this information acquisition process as a Markov…