Related papers: Timing Games in Responsive Consensus Protocols
We propose a model suggesting that honest-but-rational consensus participants may play timing games, and strategically delay their block proposal to optimize MEV capture, while still ensuring the proposal's timely inclusion in the canonical…
Propagation latency is inherent to any distributed network, including blockchains. Typically, blockchain protocols provide a timing buffer for block propagation across the network. In leader-based blockchains, the leader -- block proposer…
Cooperation is fundamental for human prosperity. Blockchain, as a trust machine, is a cooperative institution in cyberspace that supports cooperation through distributed trust with consensus protocols. While studies in computer science…
Given the parallels between game theory and consensus, it makes sense to intelligently design blockchain or DAG protocols with an incentive-compatible-first mentality. To that end, we propose a new blockchain or DAG protocol enhancement…
Blockchains rely on economic incentives to ensure secure and decentralised operation, making incentive compatibility a core design concern. However, protocols are rarely deployed in isolation. Applications interact with the underlying…
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…
Low transaction throughput and poor scalability are significant issues in public blockchain consensus protocols such as Bitcoins. Recent research efforts in this direction have proposed shard-based consensus protocols where the key idea is…
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…
Blockchains have witnessed widespread adoption in the past decade in various fields. The growing demand makes their scalability and sustainability challenges more evident than ever. As a result, more and more blockchains have begun to adopt…
We study game-theoretic models for capturing participation in blockchain systems. Permissionless blockchains can be naturally viewed as games, where a set of potentially interested users is faced with the dilemma of whether to engage with…
This paper integrates Austrian capital theory with repeated game theory to examine strategic miner behaviour under different institutional conditions in blockchain systems. It shows that when protocol rules are mutable, effective time…
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…
Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocols have provable safety and liveness properties for static validator sets. In practice, however, the validator set changes over time, potentially eroding the protocol's security guarantees. For…
We study a robust, i.e. in presence of malicious participants, multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem where multiple participants are distributed on a fully decentralized blockchain, with the possibility of some being malicious. The rewards…
In this paper we analyze from the game theory point of view Byzantine Fault Tolerant blockchains when processes exhibit rational or Byzantine behavior. Our work is the first to model the Byzantine-consensus based blockchains as a committee…
A decentralized blockchain is a distributed ledger that is often used as a platform for exchanging goods and services. This ledger is maintained by a network of nodes that obeys a set of rules, called a consensus protocol, which helps to…
Smart contracts are stateful programs deployed on blockchains; they secure over a trillion dollars in transaction value per year. High-stakes smart contracts often rely on timely alerts about external events, but prior work has not analyzed…
This paper develops a formal game-theoretic model to examine how protocol mutability disrupts cooperative mining behaviour in blockchain systems. Using a repeated game framework with stochastic rule shocks, we show that even minor…
Blockchain platforms such as Ethereum and several others execute complex transactions in blocks through user-defined scripts known as smart contracts. To append a correct block into blockchain, miners execute these transactions of smart…
Proof of Stake (PoS) protocols rely on voting mechanisms to reach consensus on the current state. If an enhanced majority of staking nodes, also called validators, agree on a proposed block, then this block is appended to the blockchain.…