1,082 research outputs found
Transaction Propagation on Permissionless Blockchains: Incentive and Routing Mechanisms
Existing permissionless blockchain solutions rely on peer-to-peer propagation
mechanisms, where nodes in a network transfer transaction they received to
their neighbors. Unfortunately, there is no explicit incentive for such
transaction propagation. Therefore, existing propagation mechanisms will not be
sustainable in a fully decentralized blockchain with rational nodes. In this
work, we formally define the problem of incentivizing nodes for transaction
propagation. We propose an incentive mechanism where each node involved in the
propagation of a transaction receives a share of the transaction fee. We also
show that our proposal is Sybil-proof. Furthermore, we combine the incentive
mechanism with smart routing to reduce the communication and storage costs at
the same time. The proposed routing mechanism reduces the redundant transaction
propagation from the size of the network to a factor of average shortest path
length. The routing mechanism is built upon a specific type of consensus
protocol where the round leader who creates the transaction block is known in
advance. Note that our routing mechanism is a generic one and can be adopted
independently from the incentive mechanism.Comment: 2018 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technolog
Characterizations of Network Auctions and Generalizations of VCG
With the growth of networks, promoting products through social networks has
become an important problem. For auctions in social networks, items are needed
to be sold to agents in a network, where each agent can bid and also diffuse
the sale information to her neighbors. Thus, the agents' social relations are
intervened with their bids in the auctions. In network auctions, the classical
VCG mechanism fails to retain key properties. In order to better understand
network auctions, in this paper, we characterize network auctions for the
single-unit setting with respect to weak budget balance, individual
rationality, incentive compatibility, efficiency, and other properties. For
example, we present sufficient conditions for mechanisms to be efficient and
(weakly) incentive compatible. With the help of these properties and new
concepts such as rewards, participation rewards, and so on, we show how to
design efficient mechanisms to satisfy incentive compatibility as much as
possible, and incentive compatibility mechanisms to maximize the revenue. Our
results provide insights into understanding auctions in social networks.Comment: To appear in ECAI 202
- …