Related papers: Proof of Useful Attestation: A Consensus Primitive…
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.…
Regardless of their variations, blockchains require a consensus mechanism to validate transactions, supervise added blocks, maintain network security, synchronize the network state, and distribute incentives. Proof-of-Work (PoW), one of the…
Current blockchain consensus protocols -- notably, Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) -- deliver global agreement but exhibit structural constraints. PoW anchors security in heavy computation, inflating energy use and imposing…
Cryptocurrencies have gained popularity due to their transparency, security, and accessibility compared to traditional financial systems, with Bitcoin, introduced in 2009, leading the market. Bitcoin's security relies on blockchain…
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…
Proof of Work (PoW) is widely regarded as the most secure permissionless blockchain consensus protocol. However, its reliance on computationally intensive yet externally useless puzzles results in excessive electric energy wasting. To…
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…
Proof of Stake (PoS) is a burgeoning Sybil resistance mechanism that aims to have a digital asset ("token") serve as security collateral in crypto networks. However, PoS has so far eluded a comprehensive threat model that encompasses both…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a popular consensus protocol used by Bitcoin since its inception. PoW has the well-known flaw of assigning all the reward to the single miner (or pool) that inserts the new block. This has the consequence of making…
We compare the total capital efficiency of secure restaking and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols. First, we consider the sufficient condition for the restaking graph to be secure. The condition implies that it is always possible to transform…
While Proof-of-Work (PoW) is the most widely used consensus mechanism for blockchain, it received harsh criticism due to its massive waste of energy for meaningless hash calculation. Some studies have introduced Proof-of-Stake to address…
We present a novel method for a multi-party, zero-trust validator infrastructure deployment arrangement via smart contracts to secure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains. The proposed arrangement architecture employs a combination of…
While reinforcement learning (RL) enhances their ability to plan and reason across retrieval steps, we identify a critical failure mode in this setting: Tool-Call Hacking. Unlike execution-based tools (e.g., code or math), whose effects are…
We propose a new Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol constructed with a verifiable random function (VRF) and a verifiable delay function (VDF) that has the following properties: a) all addresses with positive stake can participate; b) is fair…
Proof-of-work (PoW) is an algorithmic tool used to secure networks by imposing a computational cost on participating devices. Unfortunately, traditional PoW schemes require that correct devices perform computational work perpetually, even…
The consensus protocol is the core of a blockchain system which guarantees its secure and stable operation. Proof of Activity (PoA) is a consensus protocol that tries to address some of the issues pertinent to the most widely used…
We analyze the economic incentives generated by the proof-of-stake mechanism discussed in the Ethereum Casper upgrade proposal. Compared with proof-of-work, proof-of-stake has a different cost structure for attackers. In Budish (2018),…
Blockchains have recently gained popularity thanks to their ability to record "digital truth". They are designed to keep persistence, security, and avoid attacks which is useful for many applications. However, they are still problematic in…
Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains offer promising alternatives to traditional Proof of Work (PoW) systems, providing scalability and energy efficiency. However, blockchains operate in a decentralized manner and the network is composed of…
A principal vulnerability of a proof-of-work ("PoW") blockchain is that an attacker can re-write the history of transactions by forking a previously published block and build a new chain segment containing a different sequence of…