Governing the commons in blockchains

Overview & Synopsis

Blockchains are one of the most appealing technologies over the last years, both for scientists and for the general public. Blockchains are distributed ledgers that aim to offer transparency, integrity and many more advantages over their centralised counterparts. Blockchains were “revealed” and became popular thanks to the creation and rise of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Over the years, blockchain technologies become more and more popular with an exceptional peak in 2017. Blockchains are becoming mainstream technologies, as there is an observatory for blockchains established by the European Commission, blockchain forums in many countries, blockchain start-ups are flourishing, scientific conferences are discussing the topic, and even some scientific conferences are now specifically dedicated to the technology, etc. The blockchain technology promises, thanks to its integrity and transparency properties to be useful and interesting in various domains, and not only for financial systems. However, many questions and doubts float around it. Is it environmentally viable? Is the technology even ensuring its promises? Can they be used in real-life settings, etc. In this thesis, using the lens of distributed systems, we study and define the properties of committee-based blockchains and their fairness; that definition allows formalising and helping correct one of the most used blockchain of that class. Furthermore, adding lenses from game theory, we propose a methodology to analyse the rational behaviours of participants in a blockchains system. Using that methodology, we show, under different mechanisms of rewards, the necessary conditions needed to ensure the blockchain properties.