Principles of Blockchain Systems

This book is the first to present the state of the art and provide technical focus on the latest advances in the foundations of blockchain systems. It is a collaborative work between specialists in cryptography, distributed systems, formal languages, and economics, and addresses hot topics in blockchains from a theoretical perspective: cryptographic primitives, consensus, formalization of blockchain properties, game theory applied to blockchains, and economical issues. This book reflects the expertise of the various authors, and is intended to benefit researchers, students, and engineers who seek an understanding of the theoretical foundations of blockchains.

Antonio Fernández Anta is a Research Professor at IMDEA Networks. Previously he was on the faculty of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) and the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), where he received an award for his research productivity. He was a postdoc at MIT from 1995 to 1997, and spent sabbatical years at Bell Labs Murray Hill and MIT Media Lab. He was awarded the Premio Nacional de Informatica “Aritmel” in 2019 and has been a Mercator Fellow of the SFB MAKI in Germany since 2018. He has more than 25 years of research experience, and more than 200 scientific publications. He was the Chair of the Steering Committee of DISC and has served in the TPC of numerous conferences and workshops. He received his MSc and PhD from the University of SW Louisiana in 1992 and 1994, respectively. He completed his undergraduate studies at the UPM, having received awards at the university and national level for his academic performance. He is a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE.Chryssis Georgiou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. He holds a PhD (2003) and MSc (2002) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Connecticut. His research interests span the theory and practice of fault-tolerant distributed computing with a focus on algorithms and complexity. Recent research topics include the specification and implementation of distributed ledgers, the design and implementation of fault-tolerant and strongly consistent distributed storage systems, and the design and analysis of self-stabilizing distributed systems. He has published more than 100 articles in journals and conference proceedings in his area of study and he has co-authored two books on robust distributed cooperative computing. He has served on several program committees ofconferences in distributed and parallel computing and on the steering committees of DISC and ACM PODC (he is currently chairing the steering committee). He served as the General Chair of PODC 2015, the Self-Stabilizing Systems Track Program Committee co-Chair of SSS 2017, the General co-Chair of ApPLIED 2018 and ApPLIED 2019, and the PC co-Chair of NETYS 2020. Since January 2018, he has been on the editorial board of Information Processing Letters. Dr. Georgiou’s research has been funded by the University of Cyprus, the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation, and the European Commission.Maurice Herlihy has an AB in Mathematics from Harvard University, and a PhD in Computer Science from MIT. He is currently the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He has served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and the staff of DEC Cambridge Research Lab. He is the recipient of the 2003 Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing, the 2004 Godel Prize in theoretical computer science, the 2008 ISCA influential paper award, the 2012 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize, and the 2013 Wallace McDow ell award. He received a 2012 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Natural Sciences and Engineering Lecturing Fellowship, and he is a fellow of the ACM, as well as a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on various aspects of parallel and distributed computing, including linearizability, lock-free and wait-free synchronization, transactional memory, concurrent data structures, and blockchain.Maria Potop-Butucaru has been a full professor at the Sorbonne University since 2012, and she has led the Network and Performance Analysis team in LIP6 laboratory since 2018. She received her BSc in Computer Science in 1996 from University Al. I Cuza, Iasi, Romania, and her MSc in 1997 jointly from University Al. I Cuza and Paris XI University, Orsay, France. She received her PhD in 2000 from Paris XI University, France. She was Associate Professor in University Rennes 1 from 2001 to 2006, then Associate Professor at Sorbonne University (former Pierre and Marie Curie University) from 2006 to 2011. Her research interests are distributed systems resilient to multi-faults and attacks (crash, Byzantine, transient, etc.). She is interested in self* (self-organizing, self-healing, and self-stabilizing) and secure static and dynamic distributed systems (e.g., blockchains, peer-to-peer networks, sensors, and robot networks). She focuses in particular on the conception and proof of dependable distributed algorithms for fundamental distributed computing problems: communication primitives (e.g., broadcast, converge-cast, etc.), self* overlays (various spanning trees, P2P overlays, etc.), coherence and resource allocation problems (storage, mutual exclusion, etc.), consensus or leader election. She is editor of blockchain-related special issues of Annals of Telecommunications and Theoretical Computer Science. She served as PC member, chair, or general chair for several venues in distributed computing SSS, OPODIS, DISC, PODC, etc. She was deputy director of the Computer Science Master School in Sorbonne University.