The Economics of Blockchain Consensus: Exploring the Key Tradeoffs in Blockchain Design

Gans, Joshua

ISBN 10: 3031330854 / ISBN 13: 9783031330858

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

About this Item

Print on Demand.

Seller Inventory # 394321539

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Economics of Blockchain Consensus: Exploring the Key Tradeoffs in Blockchain Design
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3031330854
• ISBN 13: 9783031330858
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Blockchain technologies have been rapidly adopted for the creation of cryptocurrencies and have been explored for a myriad of applications. While this is of important economic interest, the computer science behind how blockchains operate to provide security and provenance has been largely inaccessible to economists. This book is a bridge between the computer science and the economics of blockchains.

The focus is on the value and the achievement of blockchain consensus; that is, how distributed and independent nodes are able to reach an agreement on what the current state of digital ledgers, that are the product of blockchains, are. The book shows that the goals of computer scientists in designing blockchains place very high weight on security beyond what an economist trained in game theory and mechanism design would require. It shows how blockchains can be redesigned to account for key economic trade-offs, and will be of interest to researchers and students of economics, financial technology and computer science, alongside policymakers.

About the Author

Joshua Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is also chief economist of its Creative Destruction Lab and oversees its blockchain program for startups.