Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2007/433

An (Almost) Constant-Effort Solution-Verification Proof-of-Work Protocol based on Merkle Trees

Fabien Coelho

Abstract: Proof-of-work schemes are economic measures to deter denial-of-service attacks: service requesters compute moderately hard functions that are easy to check by the provider. We present such a new scheme for solution-verification protocols. Although most schemes to date are probabilistic unbounded iterative processes with high variance of the requester effort, our Merkle tree scheme is deterministic, with an almost constant effort and null variance, and is computation-optimal.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / proof-of-work solution-verification protocol Merkle-tree

Publication Info: AfricaCrypt 2008

Date: received 22 Nov 2007, last revised 22 Jun 2008

Contact author: iacr org at coelho net

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: Updated and clarified wrt comments received at AfricaCrypt. Include (nice) color pictures which were not possible in LNCS.

Version: 20080622:111434 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2007/433

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