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It is impossible to solve the Byzantine consensus problem in an open network of $n$ participants if only $2n/3$ or less of them are correct. As blockchains need to solve consensus, one might think that blockchains need more than $2n/3$…
Blockchain systems need to solve consensus despite the presence of rational users and failures. The notion of $(k,t)$-robustness has shown instrumental to list problems that cannot be solved if $k$ players are rational and $t$ players are…
This paper presents a novel solution concept, called BAR Nash Equilibrium (BARNE) and apply it to analyse the Verifier's dilemma, a fundamental problem in blockchain. Our solution concept adapts the Nash equilibrium (NE) to accommodate…
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…
Under the assumption of complete rationality, Nash equilibrium is the only reasonable strategy (set) of the finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. In fact, some strategies only slightly deviate from the so-called rationality, and the…
Blockchain systems benefit from lessons in prior art such as fault tolerance, distributed systems, peer-to-peer systems, and game theory. In this paper we argue that blockchain algorithms should tolerate both rational (self-interested)…
This paper introduces a family of leaderless Byzantine fault tolerance protocols, built around a metastable mechanism via network subsampling. These protocols provide a strong probabilistic safety guarantee in the presence of Byzantine…
Distributed consensus protocols reach agreement among $n$ players in the presence of $f$ adversaries; different protocols support different values of $f$. Existing works study this problem for different adversary types (captured by threat…
Since the mid-1980s it has been known that Byzantine Agreement can be solved with probability 1 asynchronously, even against an omniscient, computationally unbounded adversary that can adaptively \emph{corrupt} up to $f<n/3$ parties.…
We consider the problem of rational secret sharing introduced by Halpern and Teague [1], where the players involved in secret sharing play only if it is to their advantage. This can be characterized in the form of preferences. Players would…
We introduce SNAP (Self-coNsistent Agreement Principle), a self-supervised framework for robust computation based on mutual agreement. Based on an Agreement-Reliability Hypothesis SNAP assigns weights that quantify agreement, emphasizing…
Bargaining networks model the behavior of a set of players that need to reach pairwise agreements for making profits. Nash bargaining solutions are special outcomes of such games that are both stable and balanced. Kleinberg and Tardos…
We propose a novel distributed monetary system called Hearsay that tolerates both Byzantine and rational behavior without the need for agents to reach consensus on executed transactions. Recent work [5, 10, 15] has shown that distributed…
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…
We provide a game-theoretic analysis of consensus, assuming that processes are controlled by rational agents and may fail by crashing. We consider agents that \emph{care only about consensus}: that is, (a) an agent's utility depends only on…
In this paper, we investigate the performance of the Tangle 2.0 consensus protocol in a Byzantine environment. We use an agent-based simulation model that incorporates the main features of the Tangle 2.0 consensus protocol. Our experimental…
We examine normal-form games in which players may \emph{pre-commit} to outcome-contingent transfers before choosing their actions. In the one-shot version of this model, Jackson and Wilkie showed that side contracting can backfire: even a…
We evaluate the best-response (BR) algorithm for lattice convex-quadratic games, where the players have nonlinear objectives and unbounded feasible sets. We provide a sufficient condition that if certain interaction matrices (the product of…
Achieving agreement among distributed parties is a fundamental task in modern systems, underpinning applications such as consensus in blockchains, coordination in cloud infrastructure, and fault tolerance in critical services. However, this…
The standard game-theoretic solution concept, Nash equilibrium, assumes that all players behave rationally. If we follow a Nash equilibrium and opponents are irrational (or follow strategies from a different Nash equilibrium), then we may…