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Centralization in Blockchains : = Causes and Mitigations.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Centralization in Blockchains :/
Reminder of title:	Causes and Mitigations.
Author:	Kiffer, Lucianna Carvalhaes.
Description:	1 online resource (218 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-05, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-05A.
Subject:	Computer science. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798351460987

Centralization in Blockchains : = Causes and Mitigations.
Kiffer, Lucianna Carvalhaes.

Centralization in Blockchains :Causes and Mitigations. - 1 online resource (218 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-05, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Northeastern University, 2022.

Includes bibliographical references

The celebrated Nakamoto consensus protocol [3], introduced in 2008, has ushered in several new consensus applications, most popularly cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. There has since been a spark in this new area of study in both academia and industry, including many new systems which are now part of a multi-billion dollar industry [4]. At their heart, these protocols implement a public and immutable record of transactions known as the blockchain. The main promise and appeal of such blockchain systems is decentralized governance in an open and distributed network. I present this thesis as a comprehensive study of whether or not these systems are living up to that promise.In the first part of this thesis, I focus on one of these systems: Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization [4]. I present several measurement studies, focusing on several aspects of the network and its history. My work covers how protocol changes have historically impacted the network, how users are utilizing the blockchain in their transactions, and how the peer-to-peer network responsible for disseminating the messages in the network is operating. Across all of these studies, I observe centralizing behaviors in the network linked to peer behavior, barriers of entry into the system, and miner incentives.Based on these observations, in the second part of this thesis I ask the following questions: (1) What are the conditions under which blockchain consistency can be maintained? (2) Are there protocols that will enable clients to join the system in a lightweight manner without giving up trust? And (3) What role does the mining reward function play in incentivizing more decentralized miner participation? I address these foundational questions through rigorous theoretical analyses of existing protocols, and by developing new protocols with provable guarantees. My results include a new Markov framework for analyzing consistency guarantees for several blockchain models, a lightweight transaction verification protocol, and a class of mining reward functions that promote more decentralized miner participation.In summary, the main contributions of this thesis are extensive measurement studies of blockchain systems that expose certain security vulnerabilities and centralizing factors, and the development of analytical tools and protocols to mitigate them.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798351460987Subjects--Topical Terms:

573171
Computer science.
Subjects--Index Terms:

BlockchainIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Centralization in Blockchains : = Causes and Mitigations.
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