11 Search Results for "Moroz, Daniel J."


Document
Characterizing Off-Chain Influence Proof Transaction Fee Mechanisms

Authors: Aadityan Ganesh, Clayton Thomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 362, 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)


Abstract
Roughgarden [Roughgarden, 2020] initiates the study of Transaction Fee Mechanisms (TFMs), and posits that the on-chain game of a "good" TFM should be on-chain simple (OnC-S), i.e., incentive compatible for both the users and the miner. Recent work of Ganesh, Thomas an Weinberg [Ganesh et al., 2024] posit that they should additionally be Off-Chain Influence-Proof (OffC-IP), which means that the miner cannot achieve any additional revenue by separately conducting an off-chain auction to determine on-chain inclusion. They observe that a cryptographic second-price auction satisfies both properties, but leave open the question of whether other mechanisms (such as those not dependent on cryptography) satisfy these properties. In this paper, we characterize OffC-IP TFMs: They are those satisfying a burn identity relating the burn rule to the allocation rule. In particular, we show that auction is OffC-IP if and only if its (induced direct-revelation) allocation rule X̄(⋅) and burn rule B̅(⋅) (both of which take as input users' values v₁, … , v_n) are truthful when viewing (X̄(⋅), B̅(⋅)) as the allocation and pricing rule of a multi-item auction for a single additive buyer with values (φ(v₁),…, φ(v_n)) equal to the users' virtual values. Building on this burn identity, we characterize OffC-IP and OnC-S TFMs that are deterministic and do not use cryptography: They are posted-price mechanisms with specially-tuned burns. As a corollary, we show that such TFMs can only exist with infinite supply and prior-dependence. However, we show that for randomized TFMs, there are additional OnC-S and OffC-IP auctions that do not use cryptography (even when there is {finite} supply, under prior-dependence with a bounded prior distribution). Holistically, our results show that while OffC-IP is a fairly stringent requirement, families of OffC-IP mechanisms can be found for a variety of settings.

Cite as

Aadityan Ganesh, Clayton Thomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg. Characterizing Off-Chain Influence Proof Transaction Fee Mechanisms. In 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 362, pp. 65:1-65:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{ganesh_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.65,
  author =	{Ganesh, Aadityan and Thomas, Clayton and Weinberg, S. Matthew},
  title =	{{Characterizing Off-Chain Influence Proof Transaction Fee Mechanisms}},
  booktitle =	{17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)},
  pages =	{65:1--65:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-410-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{362},
  editor =	{Saraf, Shubhangi},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.65},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-253527},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.65},
  annote =	{Keywords: Transaction Fee Mechanism Design, Off-Chain Influence Proofness, Blockchain, Decentralized Finance, Simple Auctions}
}
Document
Analyzing the Economic Impact of Decentralization on Users

Authors: Amit Levy, S. Matthew Weinberg, and Chenghan Zhou

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 362, 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)


Abstract
We model the ultimate price paid by users of a decentralized ledger as resulting from a two-stage game where Miners (/Proposers/etc.) first purchase blockspace via a Tullock contest, and then price that space to users. When analyzing our distributed ledger model, we find: - A characterization of all possible pure equilibria (although pure equilibria are not guaranteed to exist). - A natural sufficient condition, implied by Regularity (à la [Myerson, 1981]), for existence of a "market-clearing" pure equilibrium where Miners choose to sell all space allocated by the Distributed Ledger Protocol, and that this equilibrium is unique. - The market share of the largest miner is the relevant "measure of decentralization" to determine whether a market-clearing pure equilibrium exists. - Block rewards do not impact users' prices at equilibrium, when pure equilibria exist. But, higher block rewards can cause pure equilibria to exist. We also discuss aspects of our model and how they relate to blockchains deployed in practice. For example, only "patient" users (who are happy for their transactions to enter the blockchain under any miner) would enjoy the conclusions highlighted by our model, whereas "impatient" users (who are interested only for their transaction to be included in the very next block) still face monopoly pricing.

Cite as

Amit Levy, S. Matthew Weinberg, and Chenghan Zhou. Analyzing the Economic Impact of Decentralization on Users. In 17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 362, pp. 93:1-93:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{levy_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.93,
  author =	{Levy, Amit and Weinberg, S. Matthew and Zhou, Chenghan},
  title =	{{Analyzing the Economic Impact of Decentralization on Users}},
  booktitle =	{17th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2026)},
  pages =	{93:1--93:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-410-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{362},
  editor =	{Saraf, Shubhangi},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.93},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-253805},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2026.93},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Blockspace Markets, Decentralization, Distributed Ledgers, Equilibrium Analysis, Tullock Contests}
}
Document
Distributed Download from an External Data Source in Asynchronous Faulty Settings

Authors: John Augustine, Soumyottam Chatterjee, Valerie King, Manish Kumar, Shachar Meir, and David Peleg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 361, 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)


Abstract
The distributed Data Retrieval (DR) model consists of k peers connected by a complete peer-to-peer communication network, and a trusted external data source that stores an array X of n bits (n ≫ k). Up to β k of the peers might fail in any execution (for β ∈ [0, 1)). Peers can obtain the information either by inexpensive messages passed among themselves or through expensive queries to the source array X. In the DR model, we focus on designing protocols that minimize the number of queries performed by any nonfaulty peer (a measure referred to as the query complexity) while maximizing the resiliency parameter β. The Download problem requires each nonfaulty peer to correctly learn the entire array X. Earlier work on this problem focused on synchronous communication networks and established several deterministic and randomized upper and lower bounds. Our work is the first to extend the study of distributed data retrieval to asynchronous communication networks. We address the Download problem under both the Byzantine and crash failure models. We present query-optimal deterministic solutions in an asynchronous model that can tolerate any fixed fraction β < 1 of crash faults. In the Byzantine failure model, it is known that deterministic protocols incur a query complexity of Ω(n) per peer, even under synchrony. We extend this lower bound to randomized protocols in the asynchronous model for β ≥ 1/2, and further show that for β < 1/2, a randomized protocol exists with near-optimal query complexity.

Cite as

John Augustine, Soumyottam Chatterjee, Valerie King, Manish Kumar, Shachar Meir, and David Peleg. Distributed Download from an External Data Source in Asynchronous Faulty Settings. In 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 361, pp. 18:1-18:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{augustine_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.18,
  author =	{Augustine, John and Chatterjee, Soumyottam and King, Valerie and Kumar, Manish and Meir, Shachar and Peleg, David},
  title =	{{Distributed Download from an External Data Source in Asynchronous Faulty Settings}},
  booktitle =	{29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)},
  pages =	{18:1--18:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-409-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{361},
  editor =	{Arusoaie, Andrei and Onica, Emanuel and Spear, Michael and Tucci-Piergiovanni, Sara},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.18},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-251915},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.18},
  annote =	{Keywords: Byzantine Fault Tolerance, Blockchain Oracle, Data Retrieval Model, Distributed Download, asynchrony}
}
Document
Proxying Is Enough: Security of Proxying in TLS Oracles and AEAD Context Unforgeability

Authors: Zhongtang Luo, Yanxue Jia, Yaobin Shen, and Aniket Kate

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)


Abstract
TLS allows a client to securely obtain data from a server, but does not allow the client to offer the data provenance to an external node. TLS oracle protocols are used to solve the problem. Specifically, the verifier node, as an external node, is convinced that the data is indeed coming from a pre-defined TLS server, while remaining unable to access the client’s credentials (e.g., password). Previous TLS oracle protocols such as DECO (CCS 2020) enforced the communication pattern of server-client-verifier and utilized a novel three-party handshake process during TLS to ensure data integrity against potential tempering by the client. However, this approach introduces a significant performance penalty on the client and the verifier. Most recently, some works have proposed to reduce the overhead by putting the verifier (as a proxy) between the server and the client such that the correct TLS transcript is available to the verifier. Nevertheless, these works still rely on heavy two-party secure computations or zero-knowledge proofs. In this work, we push the proxy model to the extreme, where the verifier only needs to forward messages without performing any other heavy computational operations when only the credentials should be protected and the data retrieved from the server could be open to the verifier. Surprisingly, we prove that the thorough proxy model is enough to guarantee security in some common scenarios, allowing a saving of 60-90% in running time under common scenarios. We first formalize the proxy-based Oracle protocol and functionality that allows the verifier to directly proxy client-server TLS communication, without entering a three-party handshake or interfering with the connection in any way. We then show that for common TLS-based higher-level protocols such as HTTPS, data integrity to the verifier proxy is ensured by the variable padding built into the HTTP protocol semantics. On the other hand, if a TLS-based protocol comes without variable padding, we demonstrate that data integrity cannot be guaranteed. In this context, we then study the case where the TLS response is pre-determined and cannot be tampered with during the connection. We propose the concept of context unforgeability and show that data integrity can also be guaranteed as long as the underlying Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (AEAD) satisfies context unforgeability. We further show that ChaCha20-Poly1305 satisfies the concept while AES-GCM does not.

Cite as

Zhongtang Luo, Yanxue Jia, Yaobin Shen, and Aniket Kate. Proxying Is Enough: Security of Proxying in TLS Oracles and AEAD Context Unforgeability. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 4:1-4:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{luo_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.4,
  author =	{Luo, Zhongtang and Jia, Yanxue and Shen, Yaobin and Kate, Aniket},
  title =	{{Proxying Is Enough: Security of Proxying in TLS Oracles and AEAD Context Unforgeability}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247231},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Oracle, TLS, AEAD, Key Commitment}
}
Document
PvpAMM: A Perpetual Market for Unbalanced Long-Short Positions

Authors: Zhenhang Shang, Zhenyu Zhao, and Kani Chen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)


Abstract
Perpetual futures - swap contracts without expiration dates - are the most widely traded derivatives in cryptocurrency markets. Traditional perpetual trading relies on order books, which require substantial bilateral liquidity and face challenges in high-volatility environments. In this paper, we introduce pvpAMM, a peer-to-peer perpetual trading protocol based on automated market maker (AMM) principles. The protocol enables efficient settlement of long-short mismatched markets and drives positions toward equilibrium: when the minority leveraged side wins, their returns are amplified compared to conventional perpetual contracts, while the opposite occurs when the majority side prevails. We also propose arbitrage mechanisms to maintain economic equilibrium within the pvpAMM system. By incorporating liquidity providers (LPs), the protocol aligns more closely with traditional order book trading. Numerical experiments validate our theoretical findings.

Cite as

Zhenhang Shang, Zhenyu Zhao, and Kani Chen. PvpAMM: A Perpetual Market for Unbalanced Long-Short Positions. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 34:1-34:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{shang_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.34,
  author =	{Shang, Zhenhang and Zhao, Zhenyu and Chen, Kani},
  title =	{{PvpAMM: A Perpetual Market for Unbalanced Long-Short Positions}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{34:1--34:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.34},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247534},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.34},
  annote =	{Keywords: Perpetuals, Decentralized Finance, Auto Market Making, Blockchain}
}
Document
Multidimensional Blockchain Fees Are (Essentially) Optimal

Authors: Guillermo Angeris, Theo Diamandis, and Ciamac Moallemi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)


Abstract
In this paper we show that, using only mild assumptions, dynamic multidimensional blockchain fee markets have strong performance guarantees, even against worst-case adversaries. In particular, we show that the average welfare gap between the following two scenarios is at most O(1/√T), where T is the length of the time horizon considered. In the first scenario, the designer knows all future actions by users and is allowed to fix the optimal prices of resources ahead of time, based on the designer’s oracular knowledge of those actions. In the second, the prices are updated by a very simple algorithm that does not have this oracular knowledge, special cases of which are EIP-4844 and EIP-1559, both fee mechanisms used by the Ethereum blockchain. Roughly speaking, this means that, on average, over a reasonable timescale, there is no difference in welfare between "correctly" fixing the prices, with oracular knowledge of the future, when compared to the proposed algorithm. We show a matching lower bound of Ω(1/√T) for any implementable algorithm and also separately consider the case where the adversary is known to be stochastic.

Cite as

Guillermo Angeris, Theo Diamandis, and Ciamac Moallemi. Multidimensional Blockchain Fees Are (Essentially) Optimal. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 24:1-24:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{angeris_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.24,
  author =	{Angeris, Guillermo and Diamandis, Theo and Moallemi, Ciamac},
  title =	{{Multidimensional Blockchain Fees Are (Essentially) Optimal}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247433},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchains, transaction fees, online optimization, convex optimization}
}
Document
Trustless Bridges via Random Sampling Light Clients

Authors: Bhargav Nagaraja Bhatt, Fatemeh Shirazi, and Alistair Stewart

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)


Abstract
The increasing number of blockchain projects introduced annually has led to a pressing need for secure and efficient interoperability solutions. Currently, the lack of such solutions forces end-users to rely on centralized intermediaries, contradicting the core principle of decentralization and trust minimization in blockchain technology. We propose a decentralized and efficient interoperability solution (aka Bridge Protocol) that operates without additional trust assumptions, relying solely on the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) properties of the two chains being connected. In particular, relayers (actors that exchange messages between networks) are permissionless and decentralized, hence eliminating any single point of failure. We introduce Random Sampling, a novel technique for on-chain light clients to efficiently follow the history of PoS blockchains by reducing the signature verifications required. Here, the randomness is drawn on-chain, for example, using Ethereum’s RANDAO. We analyze the security of the bridge from a crypto- economic perspective and provide a framework to derive the security parameters. This includes handling subtle concurrency issues and randomness bias in strawman designs. While the protocol is applicable to various PoS chains, we demonstrate the protocol’s practical feasibility by showcasing an instantiated bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum (currently deployed), and discuss some practical security challenges. Furthermore, we evaluate the efficiency of our on-chain light client verifier (implemented as an Ethereum smart contract) against SNARK-based approaches, demonstrating significantly lower gas costs for signature verification - even for validator sets up to 10⁶.

Cite as

Bhargav Nagaraja Bhatt, Fatemeh Shirazi, and Alistair Stewart. Trustless Bridges via Random Sampling Light Clients. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 31:1-31:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{bhatt_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.31,
  author =	{Bhatt, Bhargav Nagaraja and Shirazi, Fatemeh and Stewart, Alistair},
  title =	{{Trustless Bridges via Random Sampling Light Clients}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{31:1--31:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.31},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247503},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.31},
  annote =	{Keywords: PoS Blockchains, Trustless Bridges, Light Clients, Decentralised Relayers, RANDAO Bias}
}
Document
Transaction Fee Market Design for Parallel Execution

Authors: Bahar Acilan, Andrei Constantinescu, Lioba Heimbach, and Roger Wattenhofer

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)


Abstract
Given the low throughput of blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, scalability - the ability to process an increasing number of transactions - has become a central focus of blockchain research. One promising approach is the parallelization of transaction execution across multiple threads. However, achieving efficient parallelization requires a redesign of the incentive structure within the fee market. Currently, the fee market does not differentiate between transactions that access multiple high-demand storage keys (i.e., unique identifiers for individual data entries) versus a single low-demand one, as long as they require the same computational effort. Addressing this discrepancy is crucial for enabling more effective parallel execution. In this work, we aim to bridge the gap between the current fee market and the need for parallel execution by exploring alternative fee market designs. To this end, we propose a framework consisting of two key components: a Gas Computation Mechanism (GCM), which quantifies the load a transaction places on the network in terms of parallelization and computation, measured in units of gas, and a Transaction Fee Mechanism (TFM), which assigns a price to each unit of gas. We additionally introduce a set of desirable properties for a GCM, propose several candidate mechanisms, and evaluate them against these criteria. Our analysis highlights two strong candidates: the weighted area GCM, which integrates smoothly with existing TFMs such as EIP‑1559 and satisfies a broad subset of the outlined properties, and the time-proportional makespan GCM, which assigns gas costs based on the context of the entire block’s schedule and, through this dependence on the overall execution outcome, captures the dynamics of parallel execution more accurately.

Cite as

Bahar Acilan, Andrei Constantinescu, Lioba Heimbach, and Roger Wattenhofer. Transaction Fee Market Design for Parallel Execution. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 23:1-23:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{acilan_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.23,
  author =	{Acilan, Bahar and Constantinescu, Andrei and Heimbach, Lioba and Wattenhofer, Roger},
  title =	{{Transaction Fee Market Design for Parallel Execution}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{23:1--23:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.23},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247426},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.23},
  annote =	{Keywords: blockchain, transaction fee mechanism, parallel execution}
}
Document
Selfish Mining Under General Stochastic Rewards

Authors: Maryam Bahrani, Michael Neuder, and S. Matthew Weinberg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)


Abstract
Selfish miners selectively withhold blocks to earn disproportionately high revenue. The vast majority of the selfish mining literature focuses exclusively on block rewards. [Carlsten et al., 2016] is a notable exception, observing that similar strategic behavior is profitable in a zero-block-reward regime (the endgame for Bitcoin’s quadrennial halving schedule) if miners are compensated with transaction fees alone. Neither model fully captures miner incentives today. The block reward remains 3.125 BTC, yet some blocks yield significantly higher revenue. For example, congestion during the launch of the Babylon protocol in August 2024 caused transaction fees to spike from 0.14 BTC to 9.52 BTC, a 68× increase in fees within two blocks. Our results are both practical and theoretical. Of practical interest, we study selfish mining profitability under a combined reward function that more accurately models miner incentives. This analysis enables us to make quantitative claims about protocol risk (e.g., the mining power at which a selfish strategy becomes profitable is reduced by 22% when optimizing over the combined reward function versus block rewards alone) and qualitative observations (e.g., a miner considering both block rewards and transaction fees will mine more or less aggressively respectively than if they cared about either alone). These practical results follow from our novel model and methodology, which constitute our theoretical contributions. We model general, time-accruing stochastic rewards in the Nakamoto Consensus Game, which requires explicit treatment of difficult adjustment and randomness; we characterize reward function structure through a set of properties (e.g., that rewards accrue only as a function of time since the parent block). We present a new methodology to analytically calculate expected selfish miner rewards under a broad class of stochastic reward functions and validate our method numerically by comparing it with the existing literature and simulating the combined reward sources directly.

Cite as

Maryam Bahrani, Michael Neuder, and S. Matthew Weinberg. Selfish Mining Under General Stochastic Rewards. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 20:1-20:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{bahrani_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.20,
  author =	{Bahrani, Maryam and Neuder, Michael and Weinberg, S. Matthew},
  title =	{{Selfish Mining Under General Stochastic Rewards}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247396},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Proof-of-Work, Selfish Mining, MEV}
}
Document
Hitting and Covering Affine Families of Convex Polyhedra, with Applications to Robust Optimization

Authors: Jean Cardinal, Xavier Goaoc, and Sarah Wajsbrot

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)


Abstract
Geometric hitting set problems, in which we seek a smallest set of points that collectively hit a given set of ranges, are ubiquitous in computational geometry. Most often, the set is discrete and is given explicitly. We propose new variants of these problems, dealing with continuous families of convex polyhedra, and show that they capture decision versions of the two-level finite adaptability problem in robust optimization. We show that these problems can be solved in strongly polynomial time when the size of the hitting/covering set and the dimension of the polyhedra and the parameter space are constant. We also show that the hitting set problem can be solved in strongly quadratic time for one-parameter families of convex polyhedra in constant dimension. This leads to new tractability results for finite adaptability that are the first ones with so-called left-hand-side uncertainty, where the underlying problem is non-linear.

Cite as

Jean Cardinal, Xavier Goaoc, and Sarah Wajsbrot. Hitting and Covering Affine Families of Convex Polyhedra, with Applications to Robust Optimization. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 33:1-33:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)


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@InProceedings{cardinal_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.33,
  author =	{Cardinal, Jean and Goaoc, Xavier and Wajsbrot, Sarah},
  title =	{{Hitting and Covering Affine Families of Convex Polyhedra, with Applications to Robust Optimization}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{33:1--33:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.33},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241401},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.33},
  annote =	{Keywords: Geometric hitting set problem, Continuous families of polyhedra, Robust optimization}
}
Document
Invited Talk
Dynamic Posted-Price Mechanisms for the Blockchain Transaction Fee Market (Invited Talk)

Authors: Matheus V. X. Ferreira, Daniel J. Moroz, David C. Parkes, and Mitchell Stern

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 97, 3rd International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics 2021)


Abstract
In recent years, prominent blockchain systems such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have experienced explosive growth in transaction volume, leading to frequent surges in demand for limited block space and causing transaction fees to fluctuate by orders of magnitude. Existing systems sell space using first-price auctions; however, users find it difficult to estimate how much they need to bid in order to get their transactions accepted onto the chain. If they bid too low, their transactions can have long confirmation times. If they bid too high, they pay larger fees than necessary. In light of these issues, new transaction fee mechanisms have been proposed, most notably EIP-1559, aiming to provide better usability. EIP-1559 is a history-dependent mechanism that relies on block utilization to adjust a base fee. We propose an alternative design - a dynamic posted-price mechanism - which uses not only block utilization but also observable bids from past blocks to compute a posted price for subsequent blocks. We show its potential to reduce price volatility by providing examples for which the prices of EIP-1559 are unstable while the prices of the proposed mechanism are stable. More generally, whenever the demand for the blockchain stabilizes, we ask if our mechanism is able to converge to a stable state. Our main result provides sufficient conditions in a probabilistic setting for which the proposed mechanism is approximately welfare optimal and the prices are stable. Our main technical contribution towards establishing stability is an iterative algorithm that, given oracle access to a Lipschitz continuous and strictly concave function f, converges to a fixed point of f.

Cite as

Matheus V. X. Ferreira, Daniel J. Moroz, David C. Parkes, and Mitchell Stern. Dynamic Posted-Price Mechanisms for the Blockchain Transaction Fee Market (Invited Talk). In 3rd International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics 2021). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 97, p. 6:1, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)


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@InProceedings{ferreira_et_al:OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.6,
  author =	{Ferreira, Matheus V. X. and Moroz, Daniel J. and Parkes, David C. and Stern, Mitchell},
  title =	{{Dynamic Posted-Price Mechanisms for the Blockchain Transaction Fee Market}},
  booktitle =	{3rd International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics 2021)},
  pages =	{6:1--6:1},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-220-4},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{97},
  editor =	{Gramoli, Vincent and Halaburda, Hanna and Pass, Rafael},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.6},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-159039},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.6},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, Posted-price mechanism, Credible, Incentive compatibility, Transaction fee market, first-price auction, EIP-1559}
}
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