Blockchain Papers

Evgeny Lyandres

No abstract is available for this record.

Farzulla, Murad

This paper challenges the prevailing assumption in Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) design that comprehensive transaction surveillance is necessary for financial stability and crime prevention. We propose an alternative privacy-preserving architecture that achieves equivalent or superior fraud detection through mechanism design rather than identity monitoring. Key contributions: Separation of pattern detection from identity: Transaction graph analysis identifies structural anomalies without accessing participant identities Transaction-level intervention: Suspicious activity flags individual transactions, not accounts or users Opt-in deanonymization: Identity revelation is always voluntary; users may abandon flagged transactions without consequence Architectural enforcement: Privacy guarantees are structural, not policy-dependent The framework inverts the burden of proof in financial surveillance. Rather than requiring users to demonstrate legitimacy, it requires the system to demonstrate suspicion—and even then, users retain the option to walk away. This creates a game-theoretic deterrent where illicit actors cannot complete transactions, while legitimate users experience minimal friction. We demonstrate that privacy-preserving CBDC architecture is technically feasible using established cryptographic primitives (zero-knowledge proofs, secure multi-party computation, threshold cryptography) and that the choice to implement surveillance infrastructure represents a policy decision rather than technical necessity. Part of the Adversarial Systems Research program investigating friction dynamics in complex systems where competing interests generate structural conflict.

Ahmed Saeed Bahurmuz

Ethereum, as a leading blockchain platform, experiences high variability in transaction fees due to network congestion, gas bidding, and computational complexity. This study analyzes 10,000 Ethereum transactions to identify key factors influencing transaction fees, block density, and staking mechanisms. The results show that transaction fees vary significantly, with an average of 0.1826 ETH and a standard deviation of 0.2381 ETH, indicating substantial fluctuations. A strong positive correlation (r = 0.72) between transaction size and transaction fee confirms that larger transactions incur higher costs due to increased computational demand. Time-series analysis reveals periodic spikes in gas fees, aligning with network congestion patterns. Block density averages 1718.8% (std = 501.01%), showing that some blocks are highly congested while others are underutilized. An Isolation Forest anomaly detection model identifies 3.4% of transactions as outliers, exhibiting unusually high gas fees, which may be caused by priority-based bidding, inefficient smart contract execution, or potential fee manipulation. Further analysis demonstrates that Coin Age and Stake Reward significantly influence transaction success rates. Transactions with older coins show a 7.8% higher success rate, indicating that validators may prioritize transactions with greater historical weight. Additionally, Stake Reward positively affects the Block Generation Rate (p < 0.05), confirming its role in securing the network and optimizing transaction processing. These findings provide valuable insights for Ethereum users, developers, and validators to optimize gas fees, transaction timing, and staking incentives. While this study offers critical observations, future research should focus on real-time gas fee monitoring, deep learning-based congestion forecasting, and the impact of Layer-2 scaling solutions. Understanding Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS) dynamics will be essential for ensuring fair transaction processing, reducing gas fees, and improving blockchain efficiency.

Mohammad Fardad, Elham Mohammadzadeh Mianji, Maryam Basereh, Fiona Delaney · 7 authors

Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) represent a paradigm shift in digital record-keeping and transaction processing, offering unprecedented levels of transparency, security, and immutability. These technologies, which underpin cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and innovative applications across various sectors, are rapidly evolving. However, their widespread adoption and integration into mainstream economic and social systems are contingent upon the establishment of robust standardization and regulatory frameworks. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the current landscape of blockchain and DLT standardization and regulation. We examine the critical role of key standardization bodies, including ISO, ITU-T, IEEE, and W3C, analyzing their contributions, published standards, and ongoing initiatives. We also examine the existing regulatory approaches across various regions and evaluate international harmonization efforts. Furthermore, this survey identifies and discusses the overlaps, gaps, and conflicts in current standards development, as well as the technical, legal, and governance challenges inherent in this field. Finally, we highlight opportunities for enhancing interoperability, coordinating global efforts, and promoting inclusivity in standardization, offering recommendations for future directions to establish a harmonized and secure global blockchain ecosystem.

Amirreza Kazemikhasragh

No abstract is available for this record.

CTAP

Ledger-native payment systems introduce a radically new interaction paradigm at the point of sale. Rather than relying on legacy card-based processing networks, these systems enable merchant devices and user devices to collaboratively perform the construction, authorization, signing, and broadcasting of a transaction directly to a digital ledger. Once biometric authentication is performed on the user’s device, the remaining steps of the payment flow may be distributed flexibly between the devices. This shift allows the point-of-sale environment to evolve into an expressive, adaptive, and deeply interactive interface layer. This white paper presents a comprehensive exploration of the experiential landscape surrounding ledger-native payments, mapping the full set of user-experience, sensory, identity, environmental, and data-driven capabilities that emerge once retail transactions operate directly on a cryptographic substrate. The document is fully self-contained and articulates the future UX domain rather than any specific implementation.

Zhichao Wu, Peilin Ai, Xiaoni Lu

No abstract is available for this record.

Padraig Corcoran, Anqi Liu, Jing Chen, ‪Irena Spasić

Abstract We present a spatial analysis of Bitcoin-accepting merchants using BTC Map, a global crowdsourced dataset built on OpenStreetMap, to provide ground-level evidence on Bitcoin’s payment ecosystem. While prior research emphasizes macroeconomic drivers, our analysis of approximately 11,000 merchants shows that local adoption is more strongly shaped by community dynamics and sectoral niches. Acknowledging quality variance in crowdsourced data, we focus on verified regional clusters. We find a global concentration of adoption in the hospitality sector, localised clusters driven by grassroots initiatives rather than national policy and significant presence in alternative healthcare and IT services. These findings highlight the limits of top-down interventions such as El Salvador’s legal tender law and underscore the role of social networks in sustaining adoption. By contrasting spatial micro-level evidence with national studies, this work positions merchant data as a key lens for understanding Bitcoin’s evolving role as a medium of exchange.

Junya Yamada, Kentaroh Toyoda, Takanori Hara, Yu Nakahata · 6 authors

Cardano, a major Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain, aims to achieve decentralization through its reward distribution mechanism governed by the protocol parameter k, which defines the ideal number of reward-receiving stake pools. While k plays a critical role in shaping network dynamics, its current value is statically determined and lacks a formal theoretical basis.In this study, we conduct an empirical analysis of Cardano’s on-chain data to evaluate the effects of changing k on decentralization metrics such as the number of active pools, stake distribution, and the Nakamoto coefficient. Our findings show that while increasing k initially enhances decentralization, the long-term effects are limited due to dynamic shifts in pool performance and stake concentration.Based on these insights, we propose the foundation for a dynamic optimization framework that determines the appropriate value of k by integrating decentralization, operational cost, and behavioral factors. This work contributes to the development of sustainable and fair PoS governance through data-driven parameter tuning.

Χρήστος Καράπαπας

Το Web3 δεν αποτελεί απλώς μια τεχνολογική εξέλιξη, αλλά μια ριζική μετατόπιση με βαθιές φιλοσοφικές προεκτάσεις. Οραματίζεται ένα Διαδίκτυο όπου οι χρήστες βρίσκονται στο επίκεντρο, χωρίς την ανάγκη ύπαρξης κεντρικής αρχής. Στόχος του είναι να διασφαλίσει ότι οι χρήστες έχουν την πλήρη ιδιοκτησία τόσο των δεδομένων που παράγουν όσο και της αξίας — οικονομικής ή πληροφοριακής — που προκύπτει από αυτά. Αυτή η μετάβαση σε ένα νέο τεχνολογικό υπόδειγμα βρίσκει εφαρμογή σε ποικίλους τομείς, όπως η Αποκεντρωμένη Αποθήκευση (Decentralized Storage), η οποία επιτρέπει ασφαλείς, κατανεμημένες λύσεις αποθήκευσης δεδομένων με αυξημένη ανθεκτικότητα στη λογοκρισία· τα Μη Ανταλλάξιμα Διακριτικά (Non-Fungible Tokens – NFTs), που εγγυώνται την ιδιοκτησία και την αυθεντικότητα ψηφιακών περιουσιακών στοιχείων· και τα Αποκεντρωμένα Παιχνίδια (Decentralized Gaming), τα οποία αξιοποιούν την τεχνολογία blockchain για να δημιουργήσουν οικονομίες που ανήκουν στους παίκτες, αποδεικτικά σπάνια ψηφιακά αγαθά και διαφανείς μηχανισμούς παιχνιδιού. Μαζί με πλήθος άλλων καινοτομιών, οι παραπάνω τεχνολογίες διαμορφώνουν τη νέα εποχή του Διαδικτύου. Όπως είναι αναμενόμενο, το Web3 έχει προσελκύσει το ενδιαφέρον της ερευνητικής κοινότητας, η οποία προσπαθεί να το θεμελιώσει εκ νέου, βασιζόμενη σε αναδυόμενες και ακόμη ανώριμες τεχνολογίες. Παράλληλα όμως, έχει κινήσει και το ενδιαφέρον κακόβουλων παραγόντων, που εκμεταλλεύονται τον πρώιμο χαρακτήρα και την πολυπλοκότητα αυτών των αλληλένδετων συστημάτων προς ίδιον όφελος. Η πρόκληση, επομένως, είναι να εξασφαλιστεί ότι η ασφάλεια θα εξελίσσεται παράλληλα με την ανάπτυξη του οικοσυστήματος του Web3, ώστε να μην εξελιχθεί σε ένα ασταθές ή εχθρικό περιβάλλον. Η συμβολή της παρούσας διατριβής σε αυτήν την προσπάθεια είναι πολυδιάστατη. Αρχικά, μελετούμε τη σχετική βιβλιογραφία σχετικά με την αλυσίδα συστοιχιών (blockchain) του Ethereum, τα NFTs και το Interplanetary File System (IPFS), το οποίο αποτελεί θεμελιώδες στοιχείο του επιπέδου αποθήκευσης δεδομένων του Web3, με στόχο τον εντοπισμό ευπαθειών και την ανάλυση του βαθμού ύπαρξης κακόβουλης δραστηριότητας. Στη συνέχεια, υιοθετώντας την οπτική των κακόβουλων χρηστών, εξετάζουμε πιθανούς τρόπους εκμετάλλευσης των παραπάνω τεχνολογιών και τεκμηριώνουμε πιθανούς διαύλους επίθεσης, ώστε να είναι ευκολότερος ο εντοπισμός και η αντιμετώπισή τους. Τέλος, προτείνουμε βελτιώσεις στον σχεδιασμό κρίσιμων υπηρεσιών του επιπέδου εφαρμογών του Web3, οι οποίες ενισχύουν τη διαθεσιμότητα και την επεκτασιμότητά τους, θέτοντας έτσι τα θεμέλια για πιο ανθεκτικές, επεκτάσιμες και μελλοντικά βιώσιμες αποκεντρωμένες εφαρμογές.

Ho Yeol Yu, Kyu-soo Chung, Sam Schelfhout, Anthony D. Pizzo

The esports industry, facing slowing growth and revenue challenges, is actively seeking innovative monetization strategies to revitalize its revenue generation capabilities. This study investigated the adoption of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as a viable tactic to these challenges. NFTs, unique digital assets secured by blockchain technology, are becoming increasingly integrated into the esports landscape. Guided by a Diffusion of Innovations framework, we analyzed factors influencing the attitudes and purchase intentions toward NFTs of 294 competitive esports gamers. Results revealed that the adoption factors had a significant impact on attitudes toward NFTs, and thus significantly influenced purchase intentions. Notably, investment intentions did not moderate the relationship between attitude and purchase intention, suggesting that the intrinsic value of NFTs drives their appeal, rather than their potential solely as financial instruments. This research underscores the importance of leveraging NFTs’ ability to provide exclusive content and experiences, thereby enhancing fan engagement, diversifying revenue sources, and fostering a more sustainable business model.

Vuong, Quan-Hoang, La, Viet-Phuong, Nguyen, Minh-Hoang

This study explores Bitcoin's value formation through the Granular Interaction Thinking Theory-Value Theory (GITT-VT). Rather than stemming from material utility or cash flows, Bitcoin's value arises from informational attributes and interactions of multiple factors, including cryptographic order, decentralization-enabled autonomy, trust embedded in the consensus mechanism, and socio-narrative coherence that reduce entropy within decentralized value-exchange processes. To empirically assess this perspective, a Bayesian linear model was estimated using daily data from 2022 to 2025, operationalizing four informational value dimensions: Store-of-Value (SOV), Autonomy (AUT), Social-Signal Value (SSV), and Hedonic-Sentiment Value (HSV). Results indicate that only SSV exerts a highly credible positive effect on next-day returns, highlighting the dominant role of high-entropy social information in short-term pricing dynamics. In contrast, SOV and AUT show moderately reliable positive associations, reflecting their roles as low-entropy structural anchors of long-term value. HSV displays no credible predictive effect. The study advances interdisciplinary value theory and demonstrates Bitcoin as a dual-layer entropy-regulating socio-technological ecosystem. The findings offer implications for digital asset valuation, investment education, and future research on entropy dynamics across non-cash-flow digital assets.

Cyril Chambefort

Innovation has long shaped economic growth and welfare, but in banking and finance it generates a paradox: while hailed as revolutionary, it often proves fragile and rarely displaces incumbents. This dissertation investigates how FinTech and blockchain innovations could disrupt the organizational structures and dynamics of financial networks, focusing on competition, governance, and trust.The second chapter (as the first is the introduction) examines FinTech through the lens of industrial economics. Using an extended Hotelling model and original data from CIFRE company Shine, it shows that although FinTech entrants offer low-cost, mobile-native services, they struggle to achieve profitability and rarely threaten banks' market share. Traditional institutions adapt their strategies and preserve positive market share and profits, highlighting the structural resilience of incumbents and the persistent challenges faced by newcomers. This study achieves the notable contribution of offering a quantitative measure of the gap that prevents FinTechs from reaching profitability. This chapter thus provides new theoretical and empirical evidence on how geography and network structures shape competitive dynamics in modern banking, while also highlighting the persistent challenges FinTechs face in achieving profitability.The third chapter addresses blockchain as a more radical institutional innovation. Unlike FinTech firms, blockchain is not a new competitor but an alternative governance mechanism that challenges the central role of banks. Drawing on transaction cost economics (TCE theory), the analysis conceptualizes blockchain, smart contracts, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as hybrid governance forms positioned between markets and firms. These structures reduce some transaction costs but face inherent limitations in price discovery, adaptability, and enforcement, thereby reshaping rather than replacing financial institutions. This chapter contributes both to a better understanding of blockchain networks through the lens of transaction cost economics (TCE) and to the development of TCE theory itself by introducing a new hybrid form of governance.The fourth chapter study to the question of trust. While blockchain is built on “trustless” cryptographic systems, empirical analysis of major Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols shows that social and reputational dynamics remain indispensable. A Social Network Analysis (SNA) of DAO governance forums reveals hierarchical patterns, reputation effects, and off-chain trust systems that supplement algorithmic trust. This chapter therefore provides evidence into multi-level trust formation in blockchain networks and DAOs, showing that while blockchain replaces some institutional functions with cryptographic mechanisms, social and reputational dimensions remain essential to sustaining decentralized governance.Together, these findings challenge the narrative of imminent creative destruction in financial services. FinTech and blockchain foster important transformations, yet their disruptive impact is constrained by market structures, institutional dynamics, and the persistent need for social trust. By combining theoretical modelling, empirical evidence, and network analysis, this dissertation contributes to a nuanced understanding of how financial innovations evolve, not as outright replacements of traditional institutions, but as complex reconfigurations within existing networks.

Rodrigo Gonçalves Bueno, André Luiz de Souza Carneiro, João Paulo Aragão Pereira

Adoption of DeFi, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and Tokenized Multiassets necessitates new security architectures for Regulated Tokenized Multiasset Networks (RTMNs). Traditional approaches are insufficient for the distributed nature of decentralized finance, and Zero Trust models face compliance and efficiency challenges in financial networks. This paper proposes a novel framework for diverse use cases, guarantees composability, atomicity, settlement finality, and enforced compartmentalization, sharing minimal necessary information, enabling privacy-by-design. A detailed analysis of the framework’s application in RTMNs is presented, evaluating its characteristics in the context of tokenizing government securities.

R. Li, Srisht Fateh Singh, Andreas Park, Andreas Veneris

This paper presents a securities tokenization solution that brings the accessibility, transparency, efficiency, and innovation of blockchain and decentralized finance to real-world securities. Tokenization in principle seems straightforward—an intermediary holds assets and issues 1:1 tokens—but decentralized finance applications (DeFi) introduce significant complications. Even basic DeFi mechanisms, such as liquidity pools, pose challenges for tokenizing stocks and bonds because when assets are pooled in smart contracts, ownership becomes unclear, hindering asset owners to access their entitlements, such as dividends, coupons, or voting rights. Existing solutions often fail to address these challenges and are typically limited to specific security types. Our solution, by contrast, generalizes to any security and any holding rights through fungible tokens and using separate smart contracts for shareholders to redeem their entitlements. To address the decentralized ownership issue, our solution employs off-chain accounting with additional logic for liquidity pools. We implement this on Ethereum, demonstrating that it is 27% cheaper in gas costs than current alternatives. We also analyze the liquidity logic of over 90% of Ethereum's liquidity pools, confirming compatibility with our solution. Finally, we demonstrate its use for dividend-paying stocks, common stock, mergers, and coupon-paying bonds.

Krekel, William Peter

This dissertation examines the evolving market microstructure of digital assets, focusing on transaction costs, liquidity provision returns, and the development of innovative exchange mechanisms. In three essays, the research provides empirical evidence on digital asset trading in both traditional and emerging decentralized market architectures. Each essay addresses previously unresolved questions, offering valuable insights for researchers, practitioners, and regulators to better understand and manage the benefits, costs, and risks of trading in digital asset markets.The first essay examines the cost of trading across digital assets in traditional centralized limit-order-book exchanges and a nascent, decentralized market architecture: the Automated Market Maker. By employing a novel methodology the study extends prior research that relies on less detailed, low-frequency information. The findings reveal transaction cost advantages for Automated Market Makers with remarkable stability across varying levels of market volatility, trading volume, and market capitalization. These results offer practical insights into execution venue selection and market design considerations.The second essay explores the evolution of Automated Market Makers, using the introduction of a new generation of these exchange architectures as a case study. In addition to documenting their technical advancements, the research shows that asset pairs migrate to the new Automated-Market-Maker models based on asset-specific fundamentals. The study makes key contributions through two experimental setups, demonstrating that reductions in inventory costs and the introduction of flexible fee tiers deliver welfare benefits for both liquidity demanders and providers. These findings enrich the broader discussion on market design and highlight the potential for innovative mechanisms to enhance efficiency in both decentralized and traditional financial systems.The third essay sheds light on liquidity provision in Automated Market Makers. Leveraging granular profitability data, the study finds that a small subset of liquidity providers dominate liquidity provision. These sophisticated agents achieve significantly higher absolute and relative profits compared to retail participants, while demonstrating a high level of skill. The emergence of these de-facto intermediaries challenges the decentralized finance ethos of disintermediation, highlighting that liquidity provision, even in decentralized markets, remains dominated by specialists. Understanding the composition of participants in these nascent markets is not only crucial for practitioners but also regulators, enabling them to develop targeted and effective policies that promote fair and competitive market environments.

Jiachen Hou, Xiaolong Liang, Ao Guo, Fei–Yue Wang

The realization of Industry 5.0 depends on the effective utilization of high-quality, context-rich, long-tail data. Existing centralized data markets are inefficient due to high operational costs and persistent data silos. As a novel autonomous paradigm based on block-chain and smart contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) offers a superior governance framework to address these issues. However, DAO natively lacks efficient data discovery mechanisms. The prevailing pull-based query model is economically unviable for large-scale, fine-grained demands due to excessive on-chain costs. To tackle this challenge, this paper introduces Content-Addressed Subscription, a novel data discovery mechanism operating within a DAO-governed industrial data market. This mechanism builds upon the classic publish/subscribe model, algorithmically generating a unique topic identifier from the semantic content, thereby circumventing the reliance on predefined topic lists and transforming the data discovery process from inefficient pull-based queries to event-driven push notifications. The paper presents the complete architecture of the proposed solution and validates its feasibility through an industrial case study.

David Davó, Javier Arroyo, Samer Hassan, Silvia Semenzin

Despite the hype and scandals around blockchain, there are valuable applications beyond finance, such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs are self-governed online communities where users vote and manage budgets transparently. In under a decade, DAOs have evolved from theory to managing billions of dollars. Blockchain enthusiasts launched DAO platforms like our case study, “DAOstack”, promising large-scale collaboration and quickly securing millions in funding. Today, we can critically evaluate to what extent the platform followed up on its promises. In this work, we analyze DAOstack using a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data. In particular, we quantitatively examined its 92 organizations in terms of size, lifespan, activity, power concentration, and the effectiveness of its governance model. We also interviewed in-depth 6 DAOstack core users to delve deep into their experiences using the platform. Our analysis shows that DAOstack mainly hosted small, short-lived DAOs, with some exceptions. Its governance model was functional, but the economic incentives underpinning it were ineffective. The analysis of the interviews reveals interesting aspects such as the power imbalances due to token ownership and reputation, and that the voting system, though innovative, was affected by issues of cost and complexity. We conclude by discussing the challenges these platforms face and advocating for a multidisciplinary experimental approach for future DAO designers.

Robin Gansäuer, Hichem Ben Aoun, Jan Droll, Hannes Hartenstein

No abstract is available for this record.

Soobin Jang, Daeho Lee

With the introduction of blockchain technology and the emergence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), users can prove ownership of digital content by cryptographically tokenizing the content they create, and it becomes possible to trade digital content. As user-generated digital content is frequently traded online, many scholars have analyzed the factors of user transactions, but there is a limitation that they have not been able to analyze the direct relationship between the sentiments of users and price. Therefore, this study uses multi-layer perceptron so as to analyze the factors that affect the price of profile picture (PFP) NFTs by using not only collectable market indicators and technical indicators but also sentiment indicators. As a result, it was found that PFP NFTs are closely correlated with various indicators, and a model was developed to accurately predict the price fluctuations of PFP NFTs using these indicators. The empirical results demonstrate that the proposed MLP model achieved prediction accuracies of 81.49% for BAYC and 93.39% for Cryptopunks. Furthermore, stock indices were found to exert a positive influence on NFT prices, whereas increases in cryptocurrency values, interest rates, and discussion volume acted as negative determinants. By contrast, the interaction of positive and objective sentiment contributed positively to price formation.

Dusabimana Emmanuel, KN Jonathan, Djuma Sumbiri

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has been identified as an emerging technology for a transformative force in financial intermediation, introducing a trustless, programmable, and inclusive financial ecosystem. This paper identifies, show, and explores the integration of DeFi into traditional finance, focusing on how DeFi platforms are redefining financial intermediation and incorporates not only the financial perspective but also an IT-systems perspective, detailing architectures, data structures, and integration frameworks that enable collaboration between DeFi platforms and traditional financial institutions. The research identifies the limitations of current financial systems, evaluates the technical and regulatory challenges of integration, and highlights how DeFi innovations can increase efficiency, transparency, and inclusivity. Key components of this integration, such as smart contracts, decentralized lending, and interoperable frameworks, are analyzed along with their potential to overcome limitations in traditional finance. The paper concludes with recommendations for a mutually beneficial model combining DeFi and traditional finance to create a robust, secure, and inclusive global financial ecosystem.

William C. Johnson, Stefan Scharnowski

We examine how wrapped tokens – tokenized representations of assets on other block/chains – contribute to cryptocurrency price discovery. Based on high-frequency data for Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), our results indicate that wBTC accounts for about 10% of the total price discovery of Bitcoin as measured by information shares. We show that wBTC’s contribution to price discovery is positively related to wBTC liquidity and trading volume as well as to important measures of decentralized finance activity. Our results have significant implications for the relationships between crypto-assets on different platforms as well as for systemic risk in the crypto-ecosystem. • Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) is a tokenized form of Bitcoin on other blockchains. • wBTC contributes significantly to Bitcoin price discovery. • Price discovery rises with liquidity and trading volume. • wBTC’s price discovery share increases with decentralized finance activity. • Decentralized finance plays an important role in Bitcoin pricing.

Authors unavailable

No abstract is available for this record.

Bruna Bruno, Angelo Murano, Vincenzo Vesprı

This study analyzes how blockchain technology can be interpreted through an economic perspective, viewing network nodes as rational agents whose strategic behavior affects the efficiency and sustainability of decentralized systems. Using a multi-player non-cooperative game with complete but imperfect information, we model validators’ decisions in voting-based consensus mechanisms and compare alternative incentive configurations through simulation results. The analysis shows how variations in reward schemes influence validators’ behavior and consensus reliability. Extending the framework to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), the study explores how blockchain-based incentives can enhance participation, accountability, and decentralized governance. The findings highlight that incentive design plays a decisive role in aligning individual motivations with collective goals, ensuring both network integrity and long-term sustainability. Overall, this study connects economic theory with blockchain governance, extending its relevance to business and organizational contexts beyond cryptocurrencies.