I thought I'd put together a list of what in my opinion were some of the most relevant self-published bitcoin research papers. This is partly related to some work I'm doing for Ledger to solicit submissions for the inaugural edition in Q2 2016. Please suggest other papers for inclusion on this list but make a note why you think the paper is important (Note: I realize there is a huge list compiled by Brett Scott here and that my list is biased by my interests: fee market / block size, proof-of-work vs other methods, and double spending / zero conf).
In no particular order:
1. Rosenfeld, M. "Analysis of hashrate-based double-spending." (2012) https://bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf
This was the first paper to study the problem of double-spending in a comprehensive way.
2. Poelstra, A. "Distributed Consensus from Proof-of-Stake Is Impossible." (2014) https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/old-pos.pdf
3. Poelstra, A. "On Stake and Consensus." (2015) https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/new-pos.pdf
I like the direction the author is heading with this work by trying to show that the burning of physical resources by PoW "translates a fact of physics to a fact of mathematics" used to secure the Blockchain. (Andrew's second paper here is really an update of his first.)
4. Houy, N. "The Economics of Bitcoin Transaction Fees." (2015) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400519
In this paper, Houy shows that a fixed transaction fee is economically-equivalant to a limited block size. However, the author also makes further claims that are less interesting because they require the marginal cost to the miner to add another transaction to a block to be identically zero.
Does anyone know of a paper that studies the security of zero-confirm transactions?
In no particular order:
1. Rosenfeld, M. "Analysis of hashrate-based double-spending." (2012) https://bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf
This was the first paper to study the problem of double-spending in a comprehensive way.
2. Poelstra, A. "Distributed Consensus from Proof-of-Stake Is Impossible." (2014) https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/old-pos.pdf
3. Poelstra, A. "On Stake and Consensus." (2015) https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/new-pos.pdf
I like the direction the author is heading with this work by trying to show that the burning of physical resources by PoW "translates a fact of physics to a fact of mathematics" used to secure the Blockchain. (Andrew's second paper here is really an update of his first.)
4. Houy, N. "The Economics of Bitcoin Transaction Fees." (2015) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400519
In this paper, Houy shows that a fixed transaction fee is economically-equivalant to a limited block size. However, the author also makes further claims that are less interesting because they require the marginal cost to the miner to add another transaction to a block to be identically zero.
Does anyone know of a paper that studies the security of zero-confirm transactions?
