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: Technical Report A/390/CRI, École des mines de Paris

Date: received 22 Nov 2007, last revised 25 Nov 2007

Contact author: iacr org at coelho net

Available formats: PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: improved redaction thanks to new input by a collegue.

Version: 20071125:080215 (All versions of this report)

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