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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.30

Time Is Money: Strategic Timing Games in Proof-Of-Stake Protocols

Authors: Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Fahad Saleh, Thomas Thiery, Jennifer Pan, Nihar Shah, and Barnabé Monnot

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 282, 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023)

Abstract

We propose a model suggesting that rational consensus participants may play timing games, and strategically delay their block proposal to optimize MEV capture, while still ensuring the proposal’s inclusion in the canonical chain. In this context, ensuring economic fairness among consensus participants is critical to preserving decentralization. We contend that a model grounded in rational consensus participation provides a more accurate portrayal of behavior in economically incentivized systems such as blockchain protocols. We empirically investigate timing games on the Ethereum network and demonstrate that while timing games are worth playing, they are not currently being exploited by consensus participants. By quantifying the marginal value of time, we uncover strong evidence pointing towards their future potential, despite the limited exploitation of MEV capture observed at present.

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Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Fahad Saleh, Thomas Thiery, Jennifer Pan, Nihar Shah, and Barnabé Monnot. Time Is Money: Strategic Timing Games in Proof-Of-Stake Protocols. In 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 282, pp. 30:1-30:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{schwarzschilling_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2023.30,
  author =	{Schwarz-Schilling, Caspar and Saleh, Fahad and Thiery, Thomas and Pan, Jennifer and Shah, Nihar and Monnot, Barnab\'{e}},
  title =	{{Time Is Money: Strategic Timing Games in Proof-Of-Stake Protocols}},
  booktitle =	{5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-303-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{282},
  editor =	{Bonneau, Joseph and Weinberg, S. Matthew},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-192193},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: blockchain, proof-of-stake, game theory, maximal extractable value}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2019.31

Wealth Inequality and the Price of Anarchy

Authors: Kurtuluş Gemici, Elias Koutsoupias, Barnabé Monnot, Christos H. Papadimitriou, and Georgios Piliouras

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 126, 36th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2019)

Abstract

The price of anarchy quantifies the degradation of social welfare in games due to the lack of a centralized authority that can enforce the optimal outcome. It is known that, in certain games, such effects can be ameliorated via tolls or taxes. This leads to a natural, but largely unexplored, question: what is the effect of such transfers on social inequality? We study this question in nonatomic congestion games, arguably one of the most thoroughly studied settings from the perspective of the price of anarchy. We introduce a new model that incorporates the income distribution of the population and captures the income elasticity of travel time (i.e., how does loss of time translate to lost income). This allows us to argue about the equality of wealth distribution both before and after employing a mechanism. We establish that, under reasonable assumptions, tolls always increase inequality in symmetric congestion games under any reasonable metric of inequality such as the Gini index. We introduce the inequity index, a novel measure for quantifying the magnitude of these forces towards a more unbalanced wealth distribution and show it has good normative properties (robustness to scaling of income, no-regret learning). We analyze inequity both in theoretical settings (Pigou’s network under various wealth distributions) as well as experimental ones (based on a large scale field experiment in Singapore). Finally, we provide an algorithm for computing optimal tolls for any point of the trade-off of relative importance of efficiency and equality. We conclude with a discussion of our findings in the context of theories of justice as developed in contemporary social sciences and present several directions for future research.

Cite as

Kurtuluş Gemici, Elias Koutsoupias, Barnabé Monnot, Christos H. Papadimitriou, and Georgios Piliouras. Wealth Inequality and the Price of Anarchy. In 36th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 126, pp. 31:1-31:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{gemici_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2019.31,
  author =	{Gemici, Kurtulu\c{s} and Koutsoupias, Elias and Monnot, Barnab\'{e} and Papadimitriou, Christos H. and Piliouras, Georgios},
  title =	{{Wealth Inequality and the Price of Anarchy}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2019)},
  pages =	{31:1--31:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-100-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{126},
  editor =	{Niedermeier, Rolf and Paul, Christophe},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2019.31},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-102707},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2019.31},
  annote =	{Keywords: congestion games, inequality}
}

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Documents authored by Monnot, Barnabé

Time Is Money: Strategic Timing Games in Proof-Of-Stake Protocols

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Wealth Inequality and the Price of Anarchy

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