Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Invited Paper: On the Characterization of Blockchain Consensus Under Incentives

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11914))

  • 553 Accesses

Abstract

One of the novel aspects of blockchains is the intertwining of consensus properties and incentives. An incentive model determines participant behaviors and then the possibility to reach consensus. In this paper we propose a methodological approach to characterize an incentive model for blockchain consensus. An incentive model is defined through the characterization of an oracle, along with its failure model, and blockchain participants behaviors. The oracle assures Safety properties at the expense of Liveness, since Liveness is in the hands of participants that can behave obediently, strategically or in an adversarial way. We then apply the proposed methodology to define and analyze incentive models of popular blockchain solutions. The paper concludes on future research directions that can take advantage of the proposed characterization.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Incentive compatibility can be established considering different solution concepts, such as dominant strategies and Nash equilibria. Incentive compatibility of Bitcoin has been shown assuming Nash equilibria as solution concept. Formal definitions of these notions will be presented later in the paper.

  2. 2.

    Even if oracles defined in [7] are deterministic, probabilistic versions can be easily derived by associating a probability to pop \(\top \) proportional to the merit.

  3. 3.

    In [7] the consumeValidBlock, called in [7] consumeToken operation, has been reduced to the Generalized Lattice Agreement abstraction [12].

  4. 4.

    Some implementations [11, 14] provide a delegation mechanism in which a participant can delegate its merit to another one, in this case the reward is shared among delegators as well.

  5. 5.

    A strategy can be viewed as an algorithm. The state in game theory is called the information set that is evaluated each time it is updated, to select the next action or move.

  6. 6.

    Even if Byzantine failures are defined as arbitrary deviations from the prescribed behavior, an adversarial argument is assumed to prove protocols under Byzantine processes. This way the strategy of the Byzantine participant is determined.

References

  1. Abraham, I., Dolev, D., Halpern, J.Y.: Distributed protocols for leader election: a game-theoretic perspective. ACM Trans. Econ. Comput. 7(1), 4:1–4:26 (2019)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  2. Aiyer, A.S., Alvisi, L., Clement, A., Dahlin, M., Martin, J.P., Porth, C.: Bar fault tolerance for cooperative services. In: Proceedings of the 20th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, SOSP 2005, pp. 45–58 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Amoussou-Guenou, Y., Biais, B., Potop-Butucaru, M., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S.: Rationals vs Byzantines in consensus-based blockchains. CoRR abs/1902.07895 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Amoussou-Guenou, Y., Del Pozzo, A., Potop-Butucaru, M., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S.: Dissecting tendermint. In: NETYS 2019 (2019)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Amoussou-Guenou, Y., Del Pozzo, A., Potop-Butucaru, M., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S.: Correctness and fairness of Tendermint-core blockchain protocols. Research report (2018). https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01790504

  6. Amoussou-Guenou, Y., Pozzo, A.D., Potop-Butucaru, M., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S.: Correctness of tendermint-core blockchains. In: 22nd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2018, Hong Kong, China, 17–19 December 2018, pp. 16:1–16:16 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Anceaume, E., Del Pozzo, A., Ludinard, R., Potop-Butucaru, M., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S.: Blockchain abstract data type. In: SPAA 2019 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Bei, X., Chen, W., Zhang, J.: Distributed consensus resilient to both crash failures and strategic manipulations. CoRR abs/1203.4324 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Biais, B., Bisière, C., Bouvard, M., Casamatta, C.: The blockchain folk theorem. Rev. Financ. Stud. 32, 1662–1715 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Civit, P., Gilbert, S., Gramoli, V.: Polygraph: accountable byzantine agreement. IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive 2019/587 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  11. David, B., Gaži, P., Kiayias, A., Russell, A.: Ouroboros praos: an adaptively-secure, semi-synchronous proof-of-stake blockchain. In: Nielsen, J.B., Rijmen, V. (eds.) EUROCRYPT 2018. LNCS. Part II, vol. 10821, pp. 66–98. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78375-8_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Falerio, J.M., Rajamani, S.K., Rajan, K., Ramalingam, G., Vaswani, K.: Generalized lattice agreement. In: ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC 2012, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, 16–18 July 2012, pp. 125–134 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Feigenbaum, J., Shenker, S.: Distributed algorithmic mechanism design: recent results and future directions, distributed computing column. Bull. EATCS 79, 101–121 (2003)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Goodman: Tezos: a self amending crypto ledger. https://tezos.com/static/white_paper-2dc8c02267a8fb86bd67a108199441bf.pdf

  15. Gürcan, Ö., Del Pozzo, A., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S.: On the bitcoin limitations to deliver fairness to users. In: Panetto, H., et al. (eds.) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems, vol. 10573, pp. 589–606. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69462-7_37

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  16. Halpern, J.Y., Vilaça, X.: Rational consensus: extended abstract. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC 2016, Chicago, IL, USA, 25–28 July 2016, pp. 137–146 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Karakostas, D., Kiayias, A., Nasikas, C., Zindros, D.: Cryptocurrency egalitarianism: a quantitative approach. In: Tokenomics International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols 2019 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Kwon, J., Buchman, E.: Cosmos: A Network of Distributed Ledgers. https://cosmos.network/resources/whitepaper. Accessed 22 May 2018

  19. Kwon, J., Buchman, E.: Tendermint. https://tendermint.readthedocs.io/en/master/specification.html. Accessed 22 May 2018

  20. Malkhi, D., Nayak, K., Ren, L.: Flexible byzantine fault tolerance. In: ACM CCS (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Various: The Libra Blockchain. https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-blockchain.pdf

  22. Yin, M., Malkhi, D., Reiter, M.K., Golan-Gueta, G., Abraham, I.: Hotstuff: BFT consensus with linearity and responsiveness. In: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC 2019, Toronto, ON, Canada, 29 July–2 August 2019, pp. 347–356 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This position paper assembles ideas and results emerged through research conducted with E. Anceaume, A. del Pozzo, M. Potop-Butucaru and O. Gurcan. A special thanks goes to Y. Amoussou-Guenou working hard in this middle earth between distributed computing and economy and to Prof. Bias that literally opened us the door to economic methodologies.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEA LIST, PC 174, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni

Authors
  1. Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Mohsen Ghaffari

  2. Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA

    Mikhail Nesterenko

  3. Sorbonne University, Paris, France

    Sébastien Tixeuil

  4. CEA LIST, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Sara Tucci

  5. Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Yukiko Yamauchi

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Tucci-Piergiovanni, S. (2019). Invited Paper: On the Characterization of Blockchain Consensus Under Incentives. In: Ghaffari, M., Nesterenko, M., Tixeuil, S., Tucci, S., Yamauchi, Y. (eds) Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems. SSS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11914. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34992-9_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34992-9_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34991-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34992-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation