Plutus : measuring message gossiping in P2P networks and providing incentives in cryptocurrencies

In this thesis, we present Plutus, an efficient and game-theoretically proven incentive mechanism for Algorand, a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency. In order to operate, Algorand requires users to constantly propagate messages but has no mechanism to incentivize users to do so. Plutus solves this problem by keeping track of each message propagation path and rewarding the users who propagated messages using a lottery. We implemented a prototype of Plutus on top of Algorand to measure the performance and overhead of Plutus. Experimental results show that with Plutus, Algorand's block confirmation time increases by only 7% and that there is no penalty on Algorand's scalability.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Hemo, Rotem

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Yossi Gilad and Nickolai Zeldovich.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/119766

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/119766