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A Systematic Approach to Cryptocurrency Fees

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 10958))

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of transaction fees in massively replicated open blockchain systems. In such systems, like Bitcoin, a snapshot of current state required for the validation of transactions is being held in the memory, which eventually becomes a scarce resource. Uncontrolled state growth can lead to security issues. We propose a modification of a transaction fee scheme based on how much additional space will be needed for the objects created as a result of transaction processing and for how long will they live in the state. We also work out the way to combine fees charged for different resources spent (bandwidth, random-access state memory, processor cycles) in a composite fee and demonstrate consistency of the approach by analyzing the statistics from Ethereum network. We show a possible implementation for state-related fee in a form of regular payments to miners.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Information on these operations can be found in the Ethereum Yellow Paper [22].

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Correspondence to Alexander Chepurnoy .

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© 2019 International Financial Cryptography Association

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Chepurnoy, A., Kharin, V., Meshkov, D. (2019). A Systematic Approach to Cryptocurrency Fees. In: Zohar, A., et al. Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10958. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58820-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58820-8_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-58819-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-58820-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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