“The blockchain folk theorem”
Bruno Biais, Christophe Bisière, Matthieu Bouvard and Catherine Casamatta
Jan 25th, 2018 – Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)
Blockchain incentive dynamics explored, including forks, hash difficulty, mining pools. Equilibrium modeling including consensus, orphan blocks and integrity of transaction history.
“Blockchains are distributed ledgers, operated within peer-to-peer networks. If reliable and stable, they could offer a new, cost effective way to record transactions, but are they? We model the proof-of-work blockchain protocol as a stochastic game and analyse the equilibrium strategies of rational, strategic miners. Mining the longest chain is a Markov perfect equilibrium, without forking, in line with Nakamoto (2008). The blockchain protocol, however, is a coordination game, with multiple equilibria. There exist equilibria with forks, leading to orphaned blocks and persistent divergence between chains. We also show how forks can be generated by information delays and software upgrades. Last we identify negative externalities implying that equilibrium investment in computing capacity is excessive.”