Lead author here. This paper does a few things that HN may consider interesting.
1. It formalizes new security vulnerabilities in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Notably, it shows that all of these protocols repeat a simple statistical error that was introduced to the literature in the early 2000s.
2. It demonstrates how "honest majority" axioms can be replaced with a more rigorous formal method, which incorporates techniques from game theory and microeconomics to prove security from first principles.
3. It applies biological models to trust-minimized networking. By replacing handicap-authenticated signaling with cue-authenticated signaling, it obtains an exponential improvement in security and performance.
4. It proposes a cryptographic twist on the gold standard, which can deliver all the advantages of cryptocurrencies (inflation protection, smart contracts) without forcing society to abandon the existing monetary system.
1. It formalizes new security vulnerabilities in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Notably, it shows that all of these protocols repeat a simple statistical error that was introduced to the literature in the early 2000s.
2. It demonstrates how "honest majority" axioms can be replaced with a more rigorous formal method, which incorporates techniques from game theory and microeconomics to prove security from first principles.
3. It applies biological models to trust-minimized networking. By replacing handicap-authenticated signaling with cue-authenticated signaling, it obtains an exponential improvement in security and performance.
4. It proposes a cryptographic twist on the gold standard, which can deliver all the advantages of cryptocurrencies (inflation protection, smart contracts) without forcing society to abandon the existing monetary system.