Abstract
As cryptographic tokens and altcoins are increasingly being built to serve as utility tokens, the notion of useful work consensus protocols is becoming ever more important. With useful work consensus protocols, users get rewards after they have carried out some specific tasks useful for the network. While in some cases the proof of some utility or service can be provided, the majority of tasks are impossible to verify reliably. To deal with such cases, we design “Proof-of-Prestige” (PoP)—a reward system that can run directly on Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains or as a smart contract on top of Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains. PoP introduces “prestige,” which is a volatile resource that, in contrast to coins, regenerates over time. Prestige can be gained by performing useful work, spent when benefiting from services, and directly translates to users minting power. Our scheme allows us to reliably reward decentralized workers while keeping the system free for the end-users. PoP is resistant against Sybil and collusion attacks and can be used with a vast range of unverifiable tasks. We build a simulator to assess the cryptoeconomic behavior of the system and deploy a full prototype of a content dissemination platform rewarding its participants. We implement the blockchain component on both Ethereum (PoW) and Cosmos (PoS), provide a mobile application, and connect it with our scheme with a negligible memory footprint. Finally, we adapt a fair exchange protocol allowing us to atomically exchange files for rewards also in scenarios where not all the parties have Internet connectivity. Our evaluation shows that even for large Ethereum traces, PoP introduces sub-millisecond computational overhead for miners in Cosmos and less than 0.013$ smart contract invocation cost for users in Ethereum.
- 2015. ERC-20 token standard. Retrieved from https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/blob/master/EIPS/eip-20.md.Google Scholar
- 2016. Golem whitepaper. Retrieved from https://golem.network/doc/Golemwhitepaper.pdf.Google Scholar
- 2018. Chia network. Retrieved from https://chia.network.Google Scholar
- 2018. iExec whitepaper. Retrieved from https://iex.ec/whitepaper/iExec-WPv3.0-English.pdf.Google Scholar
- 2018. Noia whitepaper. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfdKbai7hkScw_Zj6-kbZPoxNCmQzKaR/view.Google Scholar
- 2018. PlayKey whiteaper. Retrieved from https://cdn.playkey.net/img/playkeynet/ico/Whitepaper_1_31_En.pdf.Google Scholar
- 2018. SONM documentation. Retrieved from https://docs.sonm.com/.Google Scholar
- 2018. Steem whitepaper. Retrieved from https://steem.io/.Google Scholar
- Mustafa Al-Bassam, Alberto Sonnino, Michał Król, and Ioannis Psaras. 2018. Airtnt: Fair exchange payment for outsourced secure enclave computations. arXiv:1805.06411. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06411.Google Scholar
- Fritz Alder, N. Asokan, Arseny Kurnikov, Andrew Paverd, and Michael Steiner. 2019. S-faas: Trustworthy and accountable function-as-a-service using intel SGX. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Cloud Computing Security Workshop. 185–199. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Adam Angelo, Pascal Thellmann, and Deniz Dalkilic. 2018. Rewarding the Token Economy. Technical Report.Google Scholar
- Giuseppe Ateniese, Ilario Bonacina, Antonio Faonio, and Nicola Galesi. 2014. Proofs of space: When space is of the essence. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography for Networks. Springer, 538–557.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Giuseppe Ateniese, Randal Burns, Reza Curtmola, Joseph Herring, Lea Kissner, Zachary Peterson, and Dawn Song. 2007. Provable data possession at untrusted stores. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. ACM, 598–609. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Leemon Baird. 2016. The Swirlds Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm: Fair, Fast, Byzantine Fault Tolerance. Technical Report.Google Scholar
- Marshall Ball, Alon Rosen, Manuel Sabin, and Prashant Nalini Vasudevan. 2017. Proofs of useful work. IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. 2017 (2017), 203.Google Scholar
- Shehar Bano, Alberto Sonnino, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Sarah Azouvi, Patrick McCorry, Sarah Meiklejohn, and George Danezis. 2017. Consensus in the age of blockchains. arXiv:1711.03936. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.03936. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Iddo Bentov, Rafael Pass, and Elaine Shi. 2016. Snow white: Provably secure proofs of stake. IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. 2016 (2016), 919.Google Scholar
- Dan Boneh, Craig Gentry, Ben Lynn, and Hovav Shacham. 2003. Aggregate and verifiably encrypted signatures from bilinear maps. In Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques (Eurocrypt’03), Vol. 2656. Springer, 416–432. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Kevin D. Bowers, Ari Juels, and Alina Oprea. 2009. Proofs of retrievability: Theory and implementation. In Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Cloud Computing Security. ACM, 43–54. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith. 2017. Casper the friendly finality gadget. CoRR abs/1710.09437 (2017).Google Scholar
- Maqsood Ahamed Abdul Careem and Aveek Dutta. 2019. SenseChain: Blockchain based reputation system for distributed spectrum enforcement. In Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN’19). IEEE, 1–10.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Binyi Chen, Yilei Chen, Kristina Hostáková, and Pratyay Mukherjee. 2019. Continuous space-bounded non-malleable codes from stronger proofs-of-space. In Proceedings of the Annual International Cryptology Conference. Springer, 467–495.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Lin Chen, Lei Xu, Nolan Shah, Zhimin Gao, Yang Lu, and Weidong Shi. 2017. On security analysis of proof-of-elapsed-time (poet). In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems. Springer, 282–297.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Y. Combinator. [n.d.]. IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO with Juan Benet. June 30th 2017.Google Scholar
- Marco Conti, Franca Delmastro, Giovanni Minutiello, and Roberta Paris. 2013. Experimenting opportunistic networks with WiFi direct. In Proceedings of the 2013 IFIP Wireless Days Conference (WD’13). IEEE, 1–6.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Cosmos. [n.d.]. Cosmos SDK. Retrieved from https://cosmos.network/.Google Scholar
- Victor Costan and Srinivas Devadas. 2016. Intel SGX explained. IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch. 2016, 086 (2016), 1–118.Google Scholar
- Hung Dang, Dat Le Tien, and Ee-Chien Chang. 2019. Towards a marketplace for secure outsourced computations. In Proceedings of the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security. Springer, 790–808.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Bernardo David, Peter Gazi, Aggelos Kiayias, and Alexander Russell. 2017. Ouroboros praos: An adaptively-secure, semi-synchronous proof-of-stake protocol. IOHK Paper (2017).Google Scholar
- Roberto Di Pietro, Luigi V. Mancini, Yee Wei Law, Sandro Etalle, and Paul Havinga. 2003. LKHW: A directed diffusion-based secure multicast scheme for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops. IEEE, 397–406.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Dan Dobre, Ghassan O. Karame, Wenting Li, Matthias Majuntke, Neeraj Suri, and Marko Vukolić. 2019. Proofs of writing for robust storage. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 30, 11 (2019), 2547–2566.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Stefan Dziembowski, Lisa Eckey, and Sebastian Faust. 2018. FairSwap: How to fairly exchange digital goods. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. ACM, 967–984. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Stefan Dziembowski, Tomasz Kazana, and Daniel Wichs. 2011. One-time computable self-erasing functions. In Proceedings of the Theory of Cryptography Conference. Springer, 125–143. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Ethereum. [n.d.]. Ropsten network. Retrieved from https://github.com/ethereum/ropsten.Google Scholar
- Ethereum. [n.d.]. Web3Py. Retrieved from https://github.com/ethereum/web3.py.Google Scholar
- Williams Ev. [n.d.]. The Medium Model. Retrieved from https://blog.medium.com/the-medium-model-3ec28c6f603a.Google Scholar
- Williams Ev. [n.d.]. Medium Partner Program. Retrieved from https://medium.com/creators.Google Scholar
- Williams Ev. [n.d.]. The rationalization of publishing. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@ev/the-rationalization-of-publishing-dc001d509de8.Google Scholar
- Ben Fisch. 2019. Tight proofs of space and replication. In Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques. Springer, 324–348.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Yossi Gilad, Rotem Hemo, Silvio Micali, Georgios Vlachos, and Nickolai Zeldovich. 2017. Algorand: Scaling byzantine agreements for cryptocurrencies. In Proceedings of the 26th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles. ACM, 51–68. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Philippe Golle, Stanislaw Jarecki, and Ilya Mironov. 2002. Cryptographic primitives enforcing communication and storage complexity. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Financial Cryptography. Springer, 120–135. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Johannes Götzfried, Moritz Eckert, Sebastian Schinzel, and Tilo Müller. 2017. Cache attacks on intel SGX. In Proceedings of the 10th European Workshop on Systems Security. ACM, 2. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Sheikh Mahbub Habib, Sebastian Ries, and Max Muhlhauser. 2010. Cloud computing landscape and research challenges regarding trust and reputation. In Proceedings of the 2010 7th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence & Computing and 7th International Conference on Autonomic & Trusted Computing. IEEE, 410–415. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Liviu-Adrian Hîrţan, Ciprian Dobre, and Horacio González-Vélez. 2020. Blockchain-based reputation for intelligent transportation systems. Sensors 20, 3 (2020), 791.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Trond Hønsi. 2017. SpaceMint-A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space. Master’s thesis. NTNU.Google Scholar
- Xing Hu and Chunming Tang. 2015. Secure outsourced computation of the characteristic polynomial and eigenvalues of matrix. J. Cloud Comput. 4, 1 (2015), 7.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Steve Huckle, Rituparna Bhattacharya, Martin White, and Natalia Beloff. 2016. Internet of things, blockchain and shared economy applications. Proc. Comput. Sci. 98 (2016), 461–466. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Kai Hwang and Deyi Li. 2010. Trusted cloud computing with secure resources and data coloring. IEEE Internet Comput. 14, 5 (2010), 14–22. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Atia Javaid, Maheen Zahid, Ishtiaq Ali, Raja Jalees Ul Hussen Khan, Zainib Noshad, and Nadeem Javaid. 2019. Reputation system for iot data monetization using blockchain. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications. Springer, 173–184.Google Scholar
- Ari Juels and Burton S. Kaliski Jr. 2007. PORs: Proofs of retrievability for large files. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. Acm, 584–597. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Nikolaos P. Karvelas and Aggelos Kiayias. 2014. Efficient proofs of secure erasure. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography for Networks. Springer, 520–537.Google Scholar
- Aggelos Kiayias, Alexander Russell, Bernardo David, and Roman Oliynykov. 2017. Ouroboros: A provably secure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol. In Proceedings of the Annual International Cryptology Conference. Springer, 357–388.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Michał Król and Ioannis Psaras. 2018. Spoc: Secure payments for outsourced computations. In Proceedings of the NDSS Workshop on Decentralized IoT Security and Standards.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Jae Kwon. 2014. Tendermint: Consensus without mining. Draft v. 0.6, Fall 1, 11 (2014).Google Scholar
- DataHop Labs. [n.d.]. Mobile application. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=network.datahop.localsharing.Google Scholar
- Protocol Labs. 2017. Proof of Replication Technical Report. Technical Report.Google Scholar
- Web3 Labs. [n.d.]. Web3J. Retrieved from https://github.com/web3j/.Google Scholar
- Julien Lavauzelle and Françoise Levy-dit Vehel. 2019. Generic constructions of PoRs from codes and instantiations. J. Math. Cryptol. 13, 2 (2019), 81–106.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Dongxiao Liu, Amal Alahmadi, Jianbing Ni, Xiaodong Lin, and Xuemin Shen. 2019. Anonymous reputation system for iiot-enabled retail marketing atop pos blockchain. IEEE Trans. Industr. Inf. 15, 6 (2019), 3527–3537.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Lakshmi Padmaja Maddali, Meena Singh Dilip Thakur, R Vigneswaran, MA Rajan, Srujana Kanchanapalli, and Batsayan Das. 2020. VeriBlock: A novel blockchain framework based on verifiable computing and trusted execution environment. In Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Communication Systems & NetworkS (COMSNETS’20). IEEE, 1–6.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Maidsafe. 2018. Maidsafe whitepaper. Retrieved from https://github.com/maidsafe/Whitepapers/blob/master/Project-Safe.md.Google Scholar
- Panpan Meng, Chengliang Tian, and Xiangguo Cheng. 2019. Publicly verifiable and efficiency/security-adjustable outsourcing scheme for solving large-scale modular system of linear equations. J. Cloud Comput. 8, 1 (2019), 1–13.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Andrew Miller, Ari Juels, Elaine Shi, Bryan Parno, and Jonathan Katz. 2014. Permacoin: Repurposing bitcoin work for data preservation. In Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP’14). IEEE, 475–490. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Tal Moran and Ilan Orlov. 2019. Simple proofs of space-time and rational proofs of storage. In Proceedings of the Annual International Cryptology Conference. Springer, 381–409.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Satoshi Nakamoto. 2008. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. (2008).Google Scholar
- Henning Pagnia and Felix C. Gärtner. 1999. On the Impossibility of Fair Exchange without a Trusted Third Party. Technical Report. Technical Report TUD-BS-1999-02, Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Computer Science, Darmstadt, Germany.Google Scholar
- Daniele Perito and Gene Tsudik. 2010. Secure code update for embedded devices via proofs of secure erasure. In Proceedings of the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security. Springer, 643–662. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Ioannis Psaras, Vasilis Sourlas, Denis Shtefan, Sergi Rene, Mayutan Arumaithurai, Dirk Kutscher, and George Pavlou. 2017. On the feasibility of a user-operated mobile content distribution network. In Proceedings of the IEEE 18th International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM’17). IEEE, 1–9.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Paul Resnick and Richard Zeckhauser. 2002. Trust among strangers in internet transactions: Empirical analysis of eBay’s reputation system. In The Economics of the Internet and E-commerce. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 127–157.Google Scholar
- Amitabh Saxena, Janardan Misra, and Aritra Dhar. 2014. Increasing anonymity in bitcoin. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Springer, 122–139.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Jianjun Sun, Jiaqi Yan, and Kem ZK Zhang. 2016. Blockchain-based sharing services: What blockchain technology can contribute to smart cities. Financ. Innov. 2, 1 (2016), 26.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Eric Ke Wang, Zuodong Liang, Chien-Ming Chen, Saru Kumari, and Muhammad Khurram Khan. 2020. PoRX: A reputation incentive scheme for blockchain consensus of IIoT. Fut. Gener. Comput. Syst. 102 (2020), 140–151.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Huaqun Wang, Debiao He, Anmin Fu, Qi Li, and Qihua Wang. 2019. Provable data possession with outsourced data transfer. IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput. (2019).Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Nico Weichbrodt, Anil Kurmus, Peter Pietzuch, and Rüdiger Kapitza. 2016. AsyncShock: Exploiting synchronisation bugs in intel SGX enclaves. In Proceedings of the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security. Springer, 440–457.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Johannes Winter. 2008. Trusted computing building blocks for embedded linux-based ARM trustzone platforms. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing. ACM, 21–30. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Gavin Wood. 2016. Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger EIP-150 Revision. Retrieved August 9, 2017 from http://gavwood.com/paper.pdf.Google Scholar
- Dawei Xie, Haining Yang, Jing Qin, and Jixin Ma. 2019. Privacy-preserving and publicly verifiable protocol for outsourcing polynomials evaluation to a malicious cloud. Int. J. Dig. Crime Forens. 11, 4 (2019), 14–27.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Hao Yan, Jiguo Li, and Yichen Zhang. 2019. Remote data checking with a designated verifier in cloud storage. IEEE Syst. J. 14, 2 (2019), 1788–1797.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Xiao Zhang, Shengli Liu, and Shuai Han. 2019. Proofs of retrievability from linearly homomorphic structure-preserving signatures. Int. J. Inf. Comput. Secur. 11, 2 (2019), 178–202. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Hui Zheng, Jun Shao, Guiyi Wei, Li Hu, Bianjing Pan, Kai Liu, and Xiaohang Mao. 2019. Attribute-based encryption with publicly verifiable outsourced decryption. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Network and System Security. Springer, 552–566.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
Index Terms
Proof-of-Prestige: A Useful Work Reward System for Unverifiable Tasks
Recommendations
Useful work: a new protocol to ensure usefulness of PoW-based consensus for blockchain
GoodIT '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social GoodThe blockchain is a new technology that attracts several actors since 2009, and in particular in the financial domain with the emergence of cryptocurrencies such as the well-known Bitcoin. In a blockchain, seen also as a distributed ledger or a chain ...
Is the cost of proof-of-work consensus quasilinear?
CODS-COMAD '18: Proceedings of the ACM India Joint International Conference on Data Science and Management of DataThe increasing popularity of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies has led to a rising interest in its underlying blockchain technology. Blockchains serve as distributed ledgers, and are fundamentally different from traditional distributed ...
Proof-of-stake at stake: predatory, destructive attack on PoS cryptocurrencies
CryBlock '20: Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains for Distributed SystemsThere have been several 51% attacks on Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains recently, including Verge and GameCredits, but the most noteworthy has been the attack that saw hackers make off with up to $18 million after a successful double-spend was executed ...






Comments