Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains

This page collects my work on cryptocurrencies and blockchains. My main conceptual idea in this area is in equations (1)-(3) of the June 2018 “Economic Limits” paper, significantly updated in June 2022. These equations show that the anonymous, decentralized trust invented by Satoshi Nakamoto is very expensive: the ongoing, “flow” cost of maintaining the trust has to be large relative to the one-off, “stock” value of attacking the system.

I have been watching this area with interest for the last several years, and recently completed a significant update of the June 2018 short paper into a more complete research paper. The June 2022 update expands the analysis of double-spending attacks, sabotage attacks and collapse scenarios. It also contains an appendix that discusses some of the responses to the June 2018 version.