Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Game Theory, Economics, and Mechanism Design for Blockchains

区块链及其对数字数据实施产权的能力，有可能开启互联网的下一个化身和新一波重要应用。 现代区块链依赖于合作行为的激励，与传统的分布式系统（如传统的银行系统）不同。去中心化区块链通常依赖于原生加密货币来激励独立参与者正确运行它们，而经典的分布式系统通常部署在定向和封闭的环境中。因此，迫切需要为区块链和加密货币的经济和激励因素建立严格的基础。 该项目团队还在开发新的和免费提供的关于区块链的教育材料，以使这个重要但复杂的主题更容易为所有人所接受。该项目有三个研究方向。 第一个重点是交易费用机制设计（即如何选择哪些待处理的交易在区块链上执行，以及以什么价格执行）。 这里的目标是了解不同交易费用机制的福利和收入近似保证，利用加密原语来克服不可能的结果，并实现对区块生产者卡特尔长期共谋的鲁棒性。 第二个重点是追求具有强博弈论保证的密码协议，重点是设计对侧合同和博弈论公平多方计算有弹性的密码机制。 最后一个重点是研究如何设计具有理想经济属性的去中心化区块链。 这里的具体目标包括确定对Nakamoto共识的简单修改，以提高其安全性，制定针对活性（而不是安全）攻击的经济安全定义，并严格比较工作量证明和权益证明机制提供的经济安全性。 该奖项反映了NSF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, and their capability of enforcing property rights for digital data, have the potential to unlock the next incarnation of the Internet and a new wave of important applications. Modern blockchains rely on incentives for cooperative behavior differently than do classical distributed systems, such as our traditional banking system. Decentralized blockchains usually rely on a native cryptocurrency to motivate independent actors to run them correctly, whereas classical distributed systems are typically deployed in directed and closed environments. There is therefore an urgent need to develop rigorous foundations of the economic and incentive factors in blockchains and cryptocurrencies in general. The project team is also developing new and freely available educational materials on blockchains, in order to make this important but complex topic more accessible to all.The project has three research thrusts. The first thrust concerns transaction fee mechanism design (that is, how to select which pending transactions are included for execution on the blockchain, and at what prices). The goals here are to understand the welfare and revenue approximation guarantees for different transaction fee mechanisms, to leverage cryptographic primitives to overcome impossibility results, and to achieve robustness to long-term collusion by cartels of block producers. The second thrust pursues cryptographic protocols that possess strong game-theoretic guarantees, with a focus on the design of cryptographic mechanisms that are resilient to side contracts and game-theoretically fair multi-party computation. The final thrust investigates how to design decentralized blockchains with desirable economic properties. Specific goals here include determining simple modifications to Nakamoto consensus that improve its security, formulating a definition of economic security against liveness (as opposed to safety) attacks, and rigorously comparing the economic security offered by proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms. Together, these research thrusts develop significant foundations for a theory of blockchains and cryptocurrencies.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.