Incentives Don't Solve Blockchain's Problems
This addresses the problem of blockchain security and decentralization for developers and researchers, but it is incremental as it critiques existing approaches without proposing a new solution.
The paper argues that monetary incentives in blockchains, such as mining rewards in proof-of-work and validator rewards in proof-of-stake, are detrimental because they cause centralization and invite attacks, and shows through analysis of other systems that such incentives are neither necessary nor sufficient for good user behavior.
A blockchain faces two fundamental challenges. It must motivate users to maintain the system while preventing a minority of these users from colluding and gaining disproportionate control. Many popular public blockchains use monetary incentives to encourage users to behave appropriately. But these same incentive schemes create more problems than they solve. Mining rewards cause centralization in "proof of work" chains such as Bitcoin. Validator rewards and punishments invite attacks in "proof of stake" chains. This paper argues why these incentive schemes are detrimental to blockchain. It considers a range of other systems---some of which incorporate monetary incentives, some of which do not---to confirm that monetary incentives are neither necessary nor sufficient for good user behavior.