Paper Info
Title
Can We Afford Integrity by Proof-of-Work? Scenarios Inspired by the Bitcoin Currency.
Abstract
Proof-of-Work (PoW), a well-known principle to ration resource access in client-server relations, is about to experience a renaissance as a mechanism to protect the integrity of a global state in distributed transaction systems under decentralized control. Most prominently, the Bitcoin cryptographic currency protocol leverages PoW to (1) prevent double spending and (2) establish scarcity, two essential properties of any electronic currency. This chapter asks the important question whether this approach is generally viable. Citing actual data, it provides a first cut of an answer by estimating the resource requirements, in terms of operating cost and ecological footprint, of a suitably dimensioned PoW infrastructure and comparing them to three attack scenarios. The analysis is inspired by Bitcoin, but generalizes to potential successors, which fix Bitcoin’s technical and economic teething troubles discussed in the literature.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1007/978-3-642-39498-0_7
The Economics of Information Security and Privacy
Keywords
Field
DocType
proof of work
Digital currency,Proof-of-work system,Transaction cost,Scarcity,Decentralised system,Computer security,Cryptography,Computer science,Distributed transaction,Currency
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
12
1.59
6
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jörg Becker11323137.64
Dominic Breuker29013.34
Tobias Heide3204.62
Justus Holler4475.96
Hans Peter Rauer5154.66
Rainer Böhme6104985.84