The Ethereum Scratch Off Puzzle
This work addresses security verification for Ethereum's CASPER protocol, which is crucial for cryptocurrency developers and users, though it is incremental as it builds on existing techniques.
The authors applied provable security techniques from Miller's thesis to analyze the CASPER proof-of-stake consensus protocol for Ethereum, concluding it satisfies almost all security definitions except one, indicating room for improvement.
Ethereum represents new innovation in the fields of cryptocurrency which has become relatively stagnate, promising many things, including an entire programming language and development enviroment built into the network. However the current trend is to write implementations and proof of concepts before doing the rigor involved with proving security. Miller's recent thesis is an attempt to remedy this, and we apply his provable security techniques to the algorithm description of CASPER, the new "proof-of-stake" consensus protocol scheme to be implemented in ethereum. We conclude by stating it satisfies almost all the definitions, except one, leaving room for improvement.