TY - JOUR
T1 - A knowledge-based analysis of the blockchain protocol
AU - Halpern, Joseph Y.
AU - Pass, Rafael
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Ron van der Meyden for useful comments. Halpern was supported in part by NSF grant CCF-1214844, AFOSR grant FA9550-12-1-0040, and ARO grants W911NF-14-1-0017 and W911NF-16-1-0397. Pass was supported in part by a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award CCF-0746990, NSF grant CCF-1214844, AFOSR Award FA9550-12-1-0040, and BSF Grant 2006317.
PY - 2017/7/25
Y1 - 2017/7/25
N2 - At the heart of the Bitcoin is a blockchain protocol, a protocol for achieving consensus on a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. To the extent that a blockchain protocol is used for applications such as contract signing and making certain transactions (such as house sales) public, we need to understand what guarantees the protocol gives us in terms of agents' knowledge. Here, we provide a complete characterization of agent's knowledge when running a blockchain protocol using a variant of common knowledge that takes into account the fact that agents can enter and leave the system, it is not known which agents are in fact following the protocol (some agents may want to deviate if they can gain by doing so), and the fact that the guarantees provided by blockchain protocols are probabilistic. We then consider some scenarios involving contracts and show that this level of knowledge suffices for some scenarios, but not others.
AB - At the heart of the Bitcoin is a blockchain protocol, a protocol for achieving consensus on a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. To the extent that a blockchain protocol is used for applications such as contract signing and making certain transactions (such as house sales) public, we need to understand what guarantees the protocol gives us in terms of agents' knowledge. Here, we provide a complete characterization of agent's knowledge when running a blockchain protocol using a variant of common knowledge that takes into account the fact that agents can enter and leave the system, it is not known which agents are in fact following the protocol (some agents may want to deviate if they can gain by doing so), and the fact that the guarantees provided by blockchain protocols are probabilistic. We then consider some scenarios involving contracts and show that this level of knowledge suffices for some scenarios, but not others.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030155169&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.251.22
DO - https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.251.22
M3 - مقالة من مؤنمر
SN - 2075-2180
VL - 251
SP - 324
EP - 335
JO - Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, EPTCS
JF - Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, EPTCS
T2 - 16th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, TARK 2017
Y2 - 24 July 2017 through 26 July 2017
ER -