The Scalability of Trustless Trust
This addresses scalability challenges for blockchain developers and users, but is incremental as it builds on existing trust models without introducing new methods.
The paper analyzes how the need for trustless trust in permissionless blockchains limits computational complexity and scalability, using Ethereum as a case study and extending findings to other platforms.
Permission-less blockchains can realise trustless trust, albeit at the cost of limiting the complexity of computation tasks. To explain the implications for scalability, we have implemented a trust model for smart contracts, described as agents in an open multi-agent system. Agent intentions are not necessarily known and autonomous agents have to be able to make decisions under risk. The ramifications of these general conditions for scalability are analysed for Ethereum and then generalised to other current and future platforms.