SHAREDWEALTH: A CRYPTOCURRENCY TO REWARD MINERS EVENLY

Bitcoin [19] is a decentralized cryptocurrency that has recently gained popularity and has emerged as a popular medium of exchange. The total market capitalization is around 1.5 billion US dollars as of October 2013 [28]. All the operations of Bitcoin are maintained in a distributed public global ledger known as a block chain which consists of all the successful transactions that have ever taken place. The security of a block chain is maintained by a chain of cryptographic puzzles solved by participants called miners, who in return are rewarded with bitcoins. To be successful, the miner has to put in his resources to solve the cryptographic puzzle (also known as a proof of work). The reward structure is an incentive for miners to contribute their computational resources and is also essential to the currency\u27s decentralized nature. One disadvantage of the reward structure is that the payment system is uneven. The reward is always given to one person. Hence people form mining pools where every member of the pool solves the same cryptographic puzzle and irrespective of the person who solved it, the reward is shared evenly among all the members of the pool. The Bitcoin protocol assumes that the miners are honest and they follow the Bitcoin protocol as prescribed. If group of selfish miners comes to lead by forming pools, the currency stops being decentralized and comes under the control of the selfish miners. Such miners can control the whole Bitcoin network [29]. Our goal is to address this problem by creating a distinct peer-to-peer protocol that reduces the incentives for the miners to join large mining pools. The central idea is to pay the “runners-up” who come close to finding a proof, thereby creating a less volatile payout situation. The work done by the “runners-up” can be used by other miners to find the solution of proof of work by building upon their work. Once they find the actual solution they have to include the solution of the other miner in order to get rewarded. The benefit of this protocol is that not only the miners save their computational resources but also the reward is distributed among the miners

IMPACT: Investigation of Mobile-user Patterns Across University Campuses using WLAN Trace Analysis

We conduct the most comprehensive study of WLAN traces to date. Measurements collected from four major university campuses are analyzed with the aim of developing fundamental understanding of realistic user behavior in wireless networks. Both individual user and inter-node (group) behaviors are investigated and two classes of metrics are devised to capture the underlying structure of such behaviors. For individual user behavior we observe distinct patterns in which most users are 'on' for a small fraction of the time, the number of access points visited is very small and the overall on-line user mobility is quite low. We clearly identify categories of heavy and light users. In general, users exhibit high degree of similarity over days and weeks. For group behavior, we define metrics for encounter patterns and friendship. Surprisingly, we find that a user, on average, encounters less than 6% of the network user population within a month, and that encounter and friendship relations are highly asymmetric. We establish that number of encounters follows a biPareto distribution, while friendship indexes follow an exponential distribution. We capture the encounter graph using a small world model, the characteristics of which reach steady state after only one day. We hope for our study to have a great impact on realistic modeling of network usage and mobility patterns in wireless networks.Comment: 16 pages, 31 figure

A Manifesto of Nodalism

This paper proposes the notion of Nodalism as a means describing contemporary culture and of understanding my own creative practice in electronic music composition. It draws on theories and ideas from Kirby, Bauman, Bourriaud, Deleuze, Guatarri, and Gochenour, to demonstrate how networks of ideas or connectionist neural models of cognitive behaviour can be used to contextualize, understand and become a creative tool for the creation of contemporary electronic music

Manifestation and mitigation of node misbehaviour in adhoc networks

Mobile adhoc network is signified as a boon for advance and future wireless communication system. Owing to its self-establishing network features and decentralization, the system can actually establish a wireless communication with vast range of connectivity with the other nodes. However, the system of MANET is also beheld with various technical impediments owing to its inherent dynamic topologies. Although there are abundant volume of research work, but very few have been able to effectively address the node misbehavior problems in MANET. The paper initially tries to draw a line between different types of nodes in MANETs based on their behavior characteristics, then reviews some of the significant contribution of the prior researches for addressing node misbehavior issues. A major emphasis is laid on is the researches which use game theory as a tool to study and address the misbehavior problems. The manuscript is developed considering some of the latest and standard evidences of past 5 years and finally discusses the open issues related to the problems

Selfish node isolation in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks.

This thesis will focus on the topic of Selfish Nodes within a Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET), specifically sensor networks due to their lower power and bandwidth. The approach used is a reputation based algorithm to isolate the selfish nodes from communication by using past history to determine how reliable the node is. The reputation of each node is determined by their behavior within the network. As a node continuously acts selfishly, their reputation is decreased, until finally meeting the minimum threshold; therefore they are determined to be malicious. A node\u27s reputation is increased for successfully participation and communication with neighboring nodes, but once a node is determined to be malicious, they are ignored and cannot regain positive reputation. Once a node is isolated, the remaining nodes must find alternate paths to send their data to avoid any and all selfish nodes, regardless of the increase in distance. The method could easily be transformed to expand such routing protocols as Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV). By using the proposed algorithm within DSDV, functionality and performance will be increased in the MANET. As a result of the isolation, retransmission is decreased and throughput increased, therefore conserving power consumption of individual nodes and creating a more reliable network by having less error rate and spare bandwidth

Innovation as Evolution

Cellular phone is one of the most developing technological artifacts today. The evolution occurs through random innovation. Our effort is trying to view the evolution of this artifact from memetic’s point of view. By constructing a phylomemetic tree based on cellular phone memes to infer or estimate the evolutionary history and relationship among cellular phone. We adopt several methods, which are commonly used in constructing phylogenetic tree, they are UPGMA algorithm and Parsimony Maximum algorithm to construct cellphone phylomemetic tree. Therefore we compare with the innovation tree, which is based on serial number and their appearance time. From phylomemetic tree, we then analyze the process of a cellular phone innovation through looking out on the cellular phone type lies in the same cluster. The comparison of the simulation tree result shows a generally different branching pattern, giving a presumption that innovation in cellular phone is not really relating with their serial number, but occurs merely because of random mutation of allomeme design and competes with its technological development