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Security analysis of blockchain technology is an active domain of research. There has been both cryptographic and game-theoretic security analysis of Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains. Prominent work includes the cryptographic security…
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…
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), when managed by a few trusted validators, require most but not all of the machinery available in public DLTs. In this work, we explore one possible way to profit from this state of affairs. We devise…
Validators in permissionless, large-scale blockchains, such as Ethereum, are typically payoff-maximizing, rational actors. Ethereum relies on in-protocol incentives, like rewards for correct and timely votes, to induce honest behavior and…
In May 2023, the Ethereum blockchain experienced its first inactivity leak, a mechanism designed to reinstate chain finalization amid persistent network disruptions. This mechanism aims to reduce the voting power of validators who are…
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…
The arisen of Bitcoin has led to much enthusiasm for blockchain research and block mining, and the extensive existence of mining pools helps its participants (i.e., miners) gain reward more frequently. Recently, the mining pools are proved…
Mining attacks aim to gain an unfair share of extra rewards in the blockchain mining. Selfish mining can preserve discovered blocks and strategically release them, wasting honest miners' computing resources and getting higher profits.…
Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies rely on distributed consensus algorithms. In recent years many consensus algorithms and protocols have been proposed; most of them are for permissioned blockchain networks. However, the…
The resource-consuming mining of blocks on a blockchain equipped with a proof of work consensus protocol bears the risk of ruin, namely when the operational costs for the mining exceed the received rewards. In this paper we investigate to…
Blockchain protocols incentivize participation through monetary rewards, assuming rational actors behave honestly to maximize their gains. However, attackers may attempt to harm others even at personal cost. These denial of profit attacks…
Due to its minimal energy requirement the PoS consensus protocol has become an attractive alternative to PoW in modern cryptocurrencies. In this protocol the chance of being selected as a block proposer in each round is proportional to the…
Blockchain as a promising technology is gaining its popularity ever since proof-of-work based Bitcoin came to the world. Nevertheless, Bitcoin achieves consensus at an expensive cost of energy. Proof-of-stake is one of the solutions for…
This paper presents a reformulation in topos logic of a safety result arising in an abstract presentation of blockchain consensus protocols. That is, in a high-level template for "correct-by-construction" consensus protocols, it is shown…
Federated learning (FL) enables multiple participants to collaboratively train machine learning models while ensuring their data remains private and secure. Blockchain technology further enhances FL by providing stronger security, a…
Permissionless consensus protocols require a scarce resource to regulate leader election and provide Sybil resistance. Existing paradigms such as Proof of Work and Proof of Stake instantiate this scarcity through parallelizable resources…
The security of most existing cryptocurrencies is based on a concept called Proof-of-Work, in which users must solve a computationally hard cryptopuzzle to authorize transactions (`one unit of computation, one vote'). This leads to enormous…
This paper extends the blockchain sustainability framework of Budish (2018) to consider proof of stake (in addition to proof of work) consensus mechanisms and permissioned (where the number of nodes are fixed) networks. It is demonstrated…
Proof-of-Location (PoL) is a lightweight security concept for Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks, focusing on the sensor nodes as the least performant and most vulnerable parts of IoT networks. PoL builds on the identification of network…
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…