A Systematic Approach to Cryptocurrency Fees

This paper is devoted to the study of transaction fees in massively replicated open blockchain systems. In such systems, like Bitcoin, a snapshot of current state required for the validation of transactions is being held in the memory, which eventually becomes a scarce resource. Uncontrolled state growth can lead to security issues. We propose a modification of a transaction fee scheme based on how much additional space will be needed for the objects created as a result of transaction processing and for how long will they live in the state. We also work out the way to combine fees charged for different resources spent (bandwidth, random-access state memory, processor cycles) in a composite fee and demonstrate consistency of the approach by analyzing the statistics from Ethereum network. We show a possible implementation for state-related fee in a form of regular payments to miners

Leveraging the next-generation power grid:Data sharing and associated partnerships

Data delivery in the power grid today is, for the most part, hard-coded, tedious to implement and change, and does not provide any real end-to-end guarantees. Applications have started to emerge that require real-time data delivery in order to provide a wide-area assessment of the health of the power grid. This paper presents two novel communication infrastructures that facilitate the delivery of power data to intended recipients, each based on a different communication paradigm. The necessity of forming and managing trusted partnerships in either framework is further discussed

Security, trust and QoS in next-generation control and communication for large power systems

control applications The present communication architecture supporting control of the electric power grid makes it difficult to use the wealth of data collected at high rates in substations, retarding their use in new applications for controlling the grid. A flexible, real-time data network would make it possible to use these data for many more control and protection applications, having the potential to increase the reliability of the grid and increase its operating efficiency. Example applications that could use these data include: decentralized load frequency control; closedloop voltage control; transient and small-signal stabilization; and special protection schemes taking advantage of data gathered over a wide area. Such applications and the flexibility of the underlying communication network imply greater sharing of data between the utilities making up the grid as well as performance, availability and reliability requirements. Mechanisms for managing security, trust, timeliness and path redundancy are thus important components of communication networks to support these control applications. This paper examines the security, trust and QoS requirements imposed by these applications and show how they are met by mechanisms included in the GridStat middleware framework that we are developing