Related papers: Distributionally Robust Game for Proof-of-Work Blo…
Mining is a central operation of all proof-of-work (PoW) based cryptocurrencies. The vast majority of miners today participate in "mining pools" instead of "solo mining" in order to lower risk and achieve a more steady income. However, this…
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…
Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains burn a lot of energy. Proof-of-work algorithms are expensive by design and often only serve to compute blockchains. In some sense, carbon-based and non-carbon based regional electric power is fungible. So the…
Proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies rely on a balance of security and fairness in order to maintain a sustainable ecosystem of miners and users. Users demand fast and consistent transaction confirmation, and in exchange drive the adoption…
The Decentralized-Consistent-Scale (DCS) Triangle defines three dimensions that illustrate the tradeoffs of the blockchain consensus mechanism. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid consensus protocol, called Deterministic Proof of Work…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a fundamental underlying technology behind most major blockchain cryptocurrencies. It has been previously pointed out that quantum devices provide a computational advantage in performing PoW in the context of Bitcoin.…
We present a novel framework for analyzing blockchain consensus mechanisms by modeling blockchain growth as a Partially Observable Stochastic Game (POSG) which we reduce to a set of Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs)…
As an emerging decentralized secure data management platform, blockchain has gained much popularity recently. To maintain a canonical state of blockchain data record, proof-of-work based consensus protocols provide the nodes, referred to as…
Bitcoin uses blockchain technology and proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism where nodes spend computing resources and earn rewards in return for spending these resources. This incentive system has caused power to be significantly biased towards a…
Proof of work (PoW), as the representative consensus protocol for blockchain, consumes enormous amounts of computation and energy to determine bookkeeping rights among miners but does not achieve any practical purposes. To address the…
Blockchain technology is a breakthrough in changing the ways of business and organization operations, in which the consensus problem is challenging with practical constraints, such as computational power and consensus standard. In this…
Proof of work cryptocurrencies began with the promise of a more egalitarian future with a decentralized monetary system with no powerful entities in charge. While this vision is far from realized, these cryptocurrencies are still touted to…
Proof-of-Stake blockchains based on a longest-chain consensus protocol are an attractive energy-friendly alternative to the Proof-of-Work paradigm. However, formal barriers to "getting the incentives right" were recently discovered, driven…
Proof of work (PoW), the most popular consensus mechanism for Blockchain, requires ridiculously large amounts of energy but without any useful outcome beyond determining accounting rights among miners. To tackle the drawback of PoW, we…
We study a game-theoretic model of blockchain mining economies and show that griefing, a practice according to which participants harm other participants at some lesser cost to themselves, is a prevalent threat at its Nash equilibria. The…
Decentralized systems built around blockchain technology promise clients an immutable ledger. They add a transaction to the ledger after it undergoes consensus among the replicas that run a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) or Byzantine Fault-Tolerant…
The rise of computational power has led to unprecedented performance gains for deep learning models. As more data becomes available and model architectures become more complex, the need for more computational power increases. On the other…
Bitcoin blockchain uses hash-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) that prevents unwanted participants from hogging the network resources. Anyone entering the mining game has to prove that they have expended a specific amount of computational power.…
The security and decentralization of Proof-of-Work (PoW) have been well-tested in existing blockchain systems. However, its tremendous energy waste has raised concerns about sustainability. Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW) aims to redirect the…
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…