Paper 2017/1167

Cryptocurrency Voting Games

Sanjay Bhattacherjee and Palash Sarkar

Abstract

This work shows that weighted majority voting games occur in cryptocurrencies. In particular, two such games are highlighted. The first game, which we call the Rule Game, pertains to the scenario where the entities in the system engage in a voting procedure to accept or reject a change of rules. The second game, which we call the Attack Game, refers to the scenario where a group of entities in a cryptocurrency system can form a coalition to engage in double spending. For the Rule Game we provide analysis to argue that the Coleman’s preventive power measure is the appropriate tool for measuring a player’s influence in the game while for the Attack Game, we define a notion of stability based on the notion of minimal winning coalitions. For both the Rule Game and the Attack Game, we show how to analyse the games based on a snapshot of real world data for Bitcoin which is presently the most popular of all the cryptocurrencies.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Applications
Publication info
Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords
Voting gamesCryptocurrencyBitcoin
Contact author(s)
sanjay bhattacherjee @ gmail com
History
2017-11-30: received
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2017/1167
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2017/1167,
      author = {Sanjay Bhattacherjee and Palash Sarkar},
      title = {Cryptocurrency Voting Games},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2017/1167},
      year = {2017},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1167}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1167}
}
Note: In order to protect the privacy of readers, eprint.iacr.org does not use cookies or embedded third party content.