NSF-BSF: SaTC: CORE: Small: Blockchain Fairness

区块链提供了令人信服的安全属性，使强大的系统能够在不依赖可信第三方的情况下构建。它们的崛起创造了成功的、价值数十亿美元的系统，并对风险投资和金融业产生了变革性影响。然而，目前设计的区块链无法为用户提供公平，这意味着快速交易处理的平等机会。项目调查人员将寻求解决区块链系统中普遍存在的公平性缺陷。该项目的新颖之处包括对区块链系统中公平性缺失的系统调查，以及探索在这些系统中不同层之间强制执行公平性的新技术。该项目的影响是严格衡量现有区块链系统中的公平差距，并创造新的设计原则和技术来解决这些差距。研究人员通过主动系统的测量和形式定义和理论分析，系统地探讨了区块链系统中的公平性失效。他们设计和实现近似或完全实现他们形式化的理想属性的解决方案。调查人员还探索了在现有区块链之上获得公平属性的选择，尽管它们根本缺乏公平保证。他们试图通过智能合约的新颖设计来实现这一目标，智能合约是在区块链平台上执行的应用程序。研究人员在他们的工作中利用严格的密码学和博弈论模型，并旨在部署成熟和实用的软件解决方案，以供从业者采用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Blockchains provide compelling security properties that enable powerful systems to be constructed without reliance on trusted third parties. Their rise has created successful, multi-billion dollar systems and has had a transformative impact on venture funding and the financial industry. Blockchains as currently designed, though, fail to enforce fairness for their users, meaning equal opportunities for fast transaction processing. The project investigators will seek to address the pervasive fairness deficiencies in blockchain systems. The project's novelties include a systematic investigation of fairness lapses in blockchain systems and the exploration of new techniques to enforce fairness across different layers in these systems. The project's impacts are rigorous measurement of fairness gaps in existing blockchain systems and the creation of new design principles and techniques to address these gaps.The investigators systematically explore failures of fairness in blockchain systems both through measurement of active systems and by means of formal definitions and theoretical analysis. They design and implement solutions that approximate or fully realize the ideal properties they formalize. The investigators also explore options for obtaining fairness properties on top of existing blockchains, despite their underlying lack of fairness guarantees. They seek to achieve this goal through novel design of smart contracts, applications that execute on top of blockchain platforms. The investigators leverage rigorous cryptographic and game-theoretic modeling in their work, and also aim to deploy software solutions that are mature and practical enough for adoption by practitioners.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.