Publication Details
StrongChain: Transparent and Collaborative Proof-of-Work Consensus
Bitcoin, proof-of-work, selfish mining, timestamp accuracy
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.
@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"
}