Joseph Bonneau

Blockchains are meant to provide an append-only sequence (ledger) of transactions. Security commonly relies on a consensus protocol in which forks in the sequence are either prevented completely or are exponentially unlikely to last more than a few blocks. This monograph proposes the design of algorithms and a system to achieve high performance (a few seconds from the time of initiation for transactions to enter the blockchain), the absence of forks, and a very low energy cost (a per transaction cost that is a factor of a billion or more less than bitcoin).The foundational component of this setup is a group of satellites whose blockchain protocol code can be verified and burned into read-only memory. Because such satellites can perhaps be destroyed but cannot be captured (unlike even fortified terrestrial servers), a reasonable assumption is that the blockchain protocol code in the satellites may fail to make progress either permanently or intermittently but will not be traitorous.A second component of this setup is a group of terrestrial sites whose job is to broadcast information about blocks and to summarize the blockchain ledger. These can be individuals who are eager to get a fee for service. Even if many of these behave traitorously (against their interests as fee-collectors), a small number of honest ones is sufficient to ensure safety and liveness. The third component of this setup is a Mission Control entity which will act very occasionally to assign roles to terrestrial sites and time slots to satellites. These assignments will be multi-signed using the digital signatures of a widely distributed group of human governors.Given these components and these reasonable assumptions, the protocol described in this monograph, called Bounce, will achieve ledger functionality for arbitrarily sized blocks at under five seconds per block and at negligible energy cost. This monograph will discuss the overall architecture and algorithms of such a system, the assumptions it makes, and the guarantees it gives.

Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies provides a comprehensive introduction to the revolutionary yet often misunderstood new technologies of digital currency. Whether you are a student, software developer, tech entrepreneur, or researcher in computer science, this authoritative and self-contained book tells you everything you need to know about the new global money for the Internet age. How do Bitcoin and its block chain actually work? How secure are your bitcoins? How anonymous are their users? Can cryptocurrencies be regulated? These are some of the many questions this book answers. It begins by tracing the history and development of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and then gives the conceptual and practical foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network as well as to integrate ideas from Bitcoin into your own projects. Topics include decentralization, mining, the politics of Bitcoin, altcoins and the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the future of Bitcoin, and more. * An essential introduction to the new technologies of digital currency* Covers the history and mechanics of Bitcoin and the block chain, security, decentralization, anonymity, politics and regulation, altcoins, and much more* Features an accompanying website that includes instructional videos for each chapter, homework problems, programming assignments, and lecture slides* Also suitable for use with the authors' Coursera online course* Electronic solutions manual (available only to professors)