Related papers: The Free Option Problem of ePBS
As the number of decentralized applications and users on Ethereum grows, the ability of the blockchain to efficiently handle a growing number of transactions becomes increasingly strained. Ethereums current execution model relies heavily on…
Layer 1 (L1) blockchains such as Ethereum are secured under an "honest supermajority of stake" assumption for a large pool of validators who verify each and every transaction on it. This high security comes at a scalability cost which not…
Ethereum's ideals of decentralization and censorship resistance are undermined in practice, motivating ongoing efforts to reestablish these properties. Existing proposals for fairness mechanisms depend on the assumption that a sufficient…
The execution of smart contracts on Ethereum, a public blockchain system, incurs a fee called gas fee for its computation and data storage. When programmers develop smart contracts (e.g., in the Solidity programming language), they could…
We study the problem of providing blockchain applications with \emph{economically viable randomness} (EVR), namely, randomness that has significant economic consequences. Applications of EVR include blockchain-based lotteries and gambling.…
Two MEV builders now produce nearly 80\% of Ethereum blocks. Block builders have the ability to reorder transactions on the blockchain in a way that can be harmful to participants. We estimate they would pay in the aggregate nearly \$14…
Multi-block MEV (MMEV) denotes the practice of securing k-consecutive blocks in an attempt at extracting surplus value by manipulating transaction ordering. Following the implementation of pro-poser/builder separation (PBS) on Ethereum,…
Vulnerabilities of Ethereum smart contracts often cause serious financial damage. Whereas the Solidity compiler has been updated to prevent vulnerabilities, its effectiveness has not been revealed so far, to the best of our knowledge. In…
Blockchains have sparked global interest in recent years, gaining importance as they increasingly influence technology and finance. This thesis investigates the robustness of blockchain protocols, specifically focusing on Ethereum…
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…
Layer-2 (L2) blockchains inherit Ethereums security guarantees while reducing gas fees. As a result, they are gaining traction among traders at Automated Market Makers (AMMs), sparking debate over whether they contribute to liquidity…
Despite their increasing popularity, blockchains still suffer from severe scalability limitations. Recently, Ethereum proposed a novel approach to block validation based on Data Availability Sampling (DAS), that has the potential to improve…
Trading on decentralized exchanges has been one of the primary use cases for permissionless blockchains with daily trading volume exceeding billions of U.S.~dollars. In the status quo, users broadcast transactions and miners are responsible…
As of July 15, 2023, Ethererum, which is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain [1] has around 410 Billion USD in total assets on chain (popularly referred to as total-value-locked, TVL) but has only 33 Billion USD worth of ETH staked in…
In this paper, we take a close look at a problem labeled maximal extractable value (MEV), which arises in a blockchain due to the ability of a block producer to manipulate the order of transactions within a block. Indeed, blockchains such…
As transaction fees skyrocket today, blockchains become increasingly expensive, hurting their adoption in broader applications. This work tackles the saving of transaction fees for economic blockchain applications. The key insight is that…
This study explores the intricacies of waiting games, a novel dynamic that emerged with Ethereum's transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS)-based block proposer selection protocol. Within this PoS framework, validators acquire a distinct…
The gas mechanism in Ethereum charges the execution of every operation to ensure that smart contracts running in EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) will be eventually terminated. Failing to properly set the gas costs of EVM operations allows…
In the Ethereum network, miners are incentivized to include transactions in a block depending on the gas price specified by the sender. The sender of a transaction therefore faces a trade-off between timely inclusion and cost of his…
We analyze the first and second moment risk premia in the Bitcoin market based on options and realized returns and contrast them to the premia embedded in the main US stock index market. First, Bitcoin is much more volatile and has a higher…