Publication detail

StrongChain: Transparent and Collaborative Proof-of-Work Consensus

HOMOLIAK, I.

Original Title

StrongChain: Transparent and Collaborative Proof-of-Work Consensus

Type

conference paper

Language

English

Original Abstract

Bitcoin is the most successful cryptocurrency so far. This is mainly due to its novel consensus algorithm, which is based on proof-of-work combined with a cryptographically-protected data structure and a  rewarding scheme that incentivizes nodes to participate. However, despite its unprecedented success Bitcoin suffers from many inefficiencies. For instance, Bitcoin's consensus mechanism has been proved to be incentive-incompatible, its high reward variance causes centralization, and its hardcoded deflation raises questions about its long-term sustainability. In this work, we revise the Bitcoin consensus mechanism by proposing StrongChain, a scheme that introduces transparency and incentivizes participants to collaborate rather than to compete. The core design of our protocol is to reflect and utilize the computing power aggregated on the blockchain which is invisible and "wasted" in Bitcoin today. Introducing relatively easy, although important changes to Bitcoin's design enables us to improve many crucial aspects of Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies making it more secure, efficient, and profitable for participants. We thoroughly analyze our approach and we present an implementation of StrongChain. The obtained results confirm its efficiency, security, and deployability.

Keywords

Bitcoin, proof-of-work, selfish mining, timestamp accuracy

Authors

HOMOLIAK, I.

Released

14. 8. 2019

Location

Santa Clara

ISBN

978-1-939133-06-9

Book

Proceedings of The 28th USENIX Security Symposium

Pages from

819

Pages to

836

Pages count

18

URL

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec19-szalachowski.pdf

BibTex

@inproceedings{BUT162600,
  author="Ivan {Homoliak}",
  title="StrongChain: Transparent and Collaborative Proof-of-Work Consensus",
  booktitle="Proceedings of The 28th USENIX Security Symposium",
  year="2019",
  pages="819--836",
  address="Santa Clara",
  isbn="978-1-939133-06-9",
  url="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec19-szalachowski.pdf"
}