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

Fabien Coelho

Paper 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.

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

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. AfricaCrypt 2008
Contact author(s): iacr org @ coelho net
History: 2008-06-22: last of 2 revisions; 2007-11-24: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2007/433
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2007/433,
      author = {Fabien Coelho},
      title = {An (Almost) Constant-Effort Solution-Verification Proof-of-Work Protocol based on Merkle Trees},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2007/433},
      year = {2007},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2007/433}
}