Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake

Iddo Bentov; Charles Lee; Alex Mizrahi; Meni Rosenfeld

Paper 2014/452

Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake

Iddo Bentov, Charles Lee, Alex Mizrahi, and Meni Rosenfeld

Abstract

We propose a new protocol for a cryptocurrency, that builds upon the Bitcoin protocol by combining its Proof of Work component with a Proof of Stake type of system. Our Proof of Activity (PoA) protocol offers good security against possibly practical future attacks on Bitcoin, and has a relatively low penalty in terms of network communication and storage space. We explore various attack scenarios and suggest remedies to potential vulnerabilities of the PoA protocol, as well as evaluate the performance of its core subroutine.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Major revision. NetEcon 2014
Keywords: Bitcoin Proof of Work Proof of Stake cryptocurrency
Contact author(s): idddo @ cs technion ac il
History: 2014-06-15: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2014/452
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2014/452,
      author = {Iddo Bentov and Charles Lee and Alex Mizrahi and Meni Rosenfeld},
      title = {Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2014/452},
      year = {2014},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452}
}