Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency. So Do Its Partners. – The New York Times

One of the biggest selling points of Facebook’s ambitious plans for its new cryptocurrency, Libra, was that the social media company had 27 partners, including prominent outfits like Visa, Mastercard and Uber, helping out on the project.But some of those partners are approaching Libra warily. They signed nonbinding agreements to join the effort partly because they knew they weren’t obliged to use or promote the digital token and could easily back out if they didn’t like where it was going, said executives at seven of those companies, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.The doubts among Facebook’s partners add to a growing list of challenges for Libra, a new digital token that Facebook executives hope will one day become the foundation for a new kind of online financial industry.Interested in All Things Tech?The Bits newsletter will keep you updated on the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.Companies are hesitant to associate themselves too closely with the Libra project because of Facebook’s issues with regulators around the world, the company’s shaky track record on privacy and how it treats corporate partners, and the uncertain legality of cryptocurrencies.Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, has scheduled a hearing on the Libra cryptocurrency.CreditErin Schaff/The New York TimesImageMaxine Waters, the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, has scheduled a hearing on the Libra cryptocurrency.Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, has scheduled a hearing on the Libra cryptocurrency.CreditErin Schaff/The New York TimesThough it was announced just a week ago, the Libra effort has already drawn scrutiny in Washington. Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee and a Democrat from California, quickly scheduled hearings to examine Libra and told Facebook to stop development of the project until big questions are answered.The House hearing is set for July 17. The Senate is expected to hold a hearing on the same issue the day before.Jerome H. Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Tuesday that the central bank would be looking at Libra “very carefully” given its potential scale. “I think that our expectations from a consumer protection standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint, are going to be very, very high,” Mr. Powell said at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.European regulators have also asked for more details about the project.Facebook said the 27 partners that it announced last week were giving at least $10 million and joining an association that would govern the Libra cryptocurrency, which is set to be introduced next year.Editors’ PicksWhen You’re Told You’re Too Fat to Get PregnantGiant Squid Reappears on Video, This Time in U.S. WatersWhen ISIS Killed Cyclists on Their Journey Around the WorldBut no money has changed hands so far. A number of partners said they would decide whether to join the association and make the payment after there is more clarity on how Libra will work, the executives from the seven companies said.A Facebook spokeswoman, Elka Looks, said in a statement that the company plans “to engage in healthy dialogue and debate with our fellow founding members, and to welcoming additional members over the coming months.”“We know this will take time and it won’t be easy, but together we will be able to make the Libra mission a reality,” Ms. Looks said.A spokesman for the Libra Association, Dante Disparte, said that since the announcement last week, the association has heard from a flood of companies interested in being members. He said the association, which will manage Libra, will most likely have a waiting list for those wanting to be among the 100 initial members it hopes to start with next year.Facebook had hoped its partners could help Libra handle some of the critics and give the project some distance from the social networking giant and its recent legal problems. But even before the project began, potential partners had their own concerns.Facebook approached a number of big financial companies, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity, about participating in the project, according to two people briefed on the discussions. The financial companies declined to join, in part because of regulatory questions about cryptocurrencies, the people said.Press officers for the banks all declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Fidelity said the company was continuing to monitor the project.

Source: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency. So Do Its Partners. – The New York Times

List of primitives useful for using cryptoeconomics-driven internet / social media applications – Economics – Ethereum Research

There has recently been a lot of interest in using cryptoeconomic or token-based techniques for fighting spam, maintaining registries, identifying fraudulent ICOs, reducing manipulability of upvoting, etc etc. However, this is an area where it is easy to create something very exploitable, or fail to achieve one’s goals, by building the application in the wrong way.Cryptoeconomics in social media has unique challenges; particularly: The inherent subjectiveness of judging the quality or suitability of a given message Rampant speaker/listener fault ambiguities 8 The public-good nature of internet content, making it difficult to incentivize The inability of a blockchain to know what happened “in the real world”, or make any measurements of the real world (with limited exceptions, eg. mining hashpower)However, there are ways to design primitives that sidestep these issues in different ways.This list is an ongoing work in progress.

Source: List of primitives useful for using cryptoeconomics-driven internet / social media applications – Economics – Ethereum Research

A curated list of awesome resources for Cryptoeconomics research

Awesome Cryptoeconomics 

A curated list of awesome resources for Cryptoeconomics research

Looking for contributors. Submit a pull request if you have something to add 🙂

Please check the contribution guidelines for info on formatting and writing pull requests.

Table of Contents

Articles

Introductory

  1. Cryptoeconomics for dummies
  2. Cryptoeconomics 101
  3. Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics Making Sense of Cryptoeconomics by Josh Stark
  4. What is Cryptoeconomics What is Cryptoeconomics, a guide by BlockGeeks
  5. How Society Will Be Transformed By Cryptoeconomics
  6. Paving the Future of Blockchain Technology
  7. Vivek Singh’s Cryptoeconomics in context
  8. Cryptoeconomics Definitions Part 1Part 2 and Part 3
  9. The Blockchain Economy: A beginner’s guide to institutional cryptoeconomics by RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub
  10. Cryptoeconomics is Hard Part 1Part 2 and Part 3 by Aleksandr Bulkin
  11. How to create a cryptoeconomic protocol from scratch by Vlad Zamfir
  12. Behavioural Crypto-Economics the challenge and promise of Blockchain Incentive Design by Elad Verbin
  13. Introduction to Blockchain through Cryptoeconomics by Zubin Koticha
  14. The need for an Incentive scheme in Algorand by Alexis Guaba, Zubin Koticha
  15. Cryptoeconomics.study — An free and open source book & course on Cryptoeconomics

Game Theory

  1. Introduction to Game Theory Part one of a series by Devin Soni
  2. Schelling Point Introduction to the concept of Schelling Point
  3. Nash Equilibria and Schelling Points
  4. The strategy of conflict book The Strategy of Conflict
  5. Mechanism design (deck) Mechanism design theory examples and complexity
  6. Standford’s Algorithmic Game Theory lecture series
  7. Cryptocurrency Game Theory What is Cryptocurrency Game Theory: A Basic introduction
  8. Correlated Equilibria In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium

Mechanism Design

  1. A Crash Course in Mechanism Design for Cryptoeconomic Applications
  2. Mechanism Theory paper by Matthew O. Jackson
  3. Mechanism Design Theory

Cryptographic Primitives

  1. Cryptographic Primitives as described in Wikipedia
  2. A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography by Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup
  3. Ethereum: Signing and Validating
  4. Merkling in Ethereum by Vitalik Buterin
  5. Bitcoin’s Academic Pedigree by Arvind Narayanan and Jeremy Clark

Consensus Mechanisms

PoW – Proof of Work

  1. PoW and Blockchains presentation by Prof. Ittay Eyal (IC3)
  2. The PoW concept article by the Nakamoto Institute
  3. ConsensusPedia – An Encylopedia of 29 consensus algorithms article by the Nakamoto Institute) article by Vasa
  4. Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake by BlockGeeks
  5. Vulnerability: Proof of Work vs. Proof of Stake

PoS – Proof of Stake

  1. Strengths and Weaknesses of PoS Vitalik Buterin’s article on the strengths and weaknesses of staking contrasting to PoW algorithms
  2. PoS Design Philosophy A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy by Vitalik Buterin
  3. Ethereum PoS FAQ
  4. The evolution of PoS Article on the evolution of PoS by Coin Telegraph
  5. Weak Subjectivity in PoS Weak Subjectivity in PoS by Vitalik Buterin
  6. The History of Casper – Chapter 1 Vlad Zamfir’s series on the history of Casper, Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5
  7. On Stake and Consensus
  8. Critic on the PoS Philosophy by Tuur Demeester
  9. Extended Summary on Casper by Jon Choi
  10. The Economics of the PoS consensus algorithm
  11. Casper vs Tendermint
  12. Minimal Slashing condition in Ethereum

DPoS – Delegated Proof of Stake

  1. DPoS Introduction Introduction to DPoS by Bitshares
  2. DPoS vs PoW Article by Daniel Larimer from Bitshares
  3. Tendermint BFT vs. EOS dPoS by Tendermint
  4. Seeking Consensus on Consensus Delegated Proof of Stake and the Two Generals’ Problem

dBFT – Delegated Byzantine Fault Tolerance

  1. Byzantine Fault Tolerance in Distributed Systems by Prof. Kenneth Goodwin
  2. dBFT vs PoW and PoS Antshare’s (now NEO) views on consensus
  3. Intro to Ethermint BFT

Network Effects

  1. A Note on Metcalfe’s Law, Externalities and Ecosystem Splits by Vitalik Buterin
  2. Continuous Token Models: Towards a Million Networks of Value by Simon de la Rouviere
  3. Crypto Tokens: A breakthrough in open network design by Chris Dixon
  4. Bitcoin Network Effects
  5. Keepers — Workers that Maintain Blockchain Networks
  6. Smart-Contract Network Effect Fallacy

Governance

  1. The Consensus Series, Part I: The Basics of Collectivity and Addendum by Aleksandr Bulkin
  2. Governance and Network Effects
  3. Notes on Blockchain Governance by Vitalik Buterin
  4. Against On-Chain Governance by Vlad Zamfir
  5. [On Public vs Private Blockchains]https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/08/07/on-public-and-private-blockchains/) by Vitalik Buterin

Cryptoeconomic Security

  1. Intro to Cryptoeconomic security Basic intro to cryptoeconomic security
  2. Anti-fragile Cryptoeconomic systems Anti-fragile cryptoeconomic Systems through game theory
  3. Triangle of harm by Vitalik Buterin
  4. On Inflation, Transaction Fees and Cryptocurrency Monetary Policy Vitalik Buterin’s article on the role of cryptoeconomics in blockchain security
  5. Settlement Finality Vitalik Buterin’s article on the elusive topic of economic finality
  6. Bancor is flawed Bancor’s review by Hacking Distributed
  7. To sink front-runners, send submarines Bancor’s front-running woes by Hacking Distributed
  8. Bitcoin’s security model by Jameson Lopp

Attacks

  1. General article on how attacks work in PoW – Part 1 and Part 2
  2. Long range attacks
  3. Censorship attacks
  4. P + epsilon attack
  5. Coordination problems
  6. The Miners dilemma
  7. Dealing with failure in cryptocurrency Vlad Zamfir’s article on dealing with failure in cryptocurrency
  8. Model of an internal PoW attacker Vlad Zamfir’s article on PoW attackers
  9. Cryptoeconomics and X-Risk researchers should listen to each other more Vitalik Buterin’s article on how cryptoeconomics and existential risk researchers could apply blockchain technology in global coordination challenges Part 2
  10. Presentation on most common attacks in Bitcoin
  11. 51% Attack Bitcoin.it Wiki explanation
  12. Selfish Mining a 25% attack against Bitcoin
  13. Sybil attack as described in Wikipedia
  14. Nothing at Stake and Long-range attacks in PoS
  15. $5 wrench Attack XKCD comic on the cheapest attack on cryptography
  16. An Exploration of Attack Vectors in Proof-of-Stake Mechanism Labs

Token Engineering

  1. The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives
  2. History Is Rhyming: Fitness Functions & Comparing Blockchain Tokens To The Web by Simon de la Rouviere
  3. Introducing Curation Markets: Trade Popularity of Memes & Information by Simon de la Rouviere
  4. Can Blockchains Go Rogue? by Trent McConaghy
  5. Towards a Practice of Token Engineering, with presentation deck here by Trent McConaghy
  6. Token Engineering Case Studies Analysis of Bitcoin, Design of Ocean Protocol by Trent McConaghy

Cryptoeconomic Primitives

  1. The Emergence of Cryptoeconomic Primitives by Jacob Horne
  2. Token Curated Registries 1.0 by Mike Goldin
  3. Continuous Token-Curated Registries: The Infinity of Lists by Simon de la Rouviere
  4. Tokens 2.0: Curved Token Bonding in Curation Markets by Simon de la Rouviere
  5. Solving Price Discovery Of Non-Rivalrous Goods (with Curved Bonding) by Simon de la Rouviere
  6. Hashtag Markets by Simon de la Rouviere
  7. How to Make Bonding Curves for Continuous Token Models
  8. Re-Fungible Token (RFT) by Billy Rennekamp

Tokenomics

  1. Token sales models Token sales models by Vitalik Buterin
  2. A business guide to Tokenomics by William Mougayar
  3. Cryptoasset Valuations by Chris Burniske
  4. Justified Token Value by Adrian Jonklaas
  5. Understanding Token Velocity
  6. On Value, Velocity and Monetary Theory
  7. The Token Classification Framework a multi-dimensional tool for understanding and classifying crypto tokens
  8. MV = PQ isn’t right for crypto a case made by Austere Capital
  9. The quantitative theory of money for tokens a rebuttal of the MV = PQ theory by Warren Weber
  10. NVT – network value to transactions ratio a market to transaction value proposal by Coinmetrics

Stablecoins

  1. Ethereum Madrid’s Cryptoeconomics 101 presentation on Stablecoins by Sandra Becker of Ethereum Madrid
  2. An Overview of stablecoins
  3. Stablecoins: A Holy Grail in digital cryptocurrencies
  4. Volatility and Mass Adoption: 2 reasons we would benefit from a stablecoin
  5. The search for a stable cryptocurrency
  6. An Experiment with Sai, a simple stablecoin by MakedDAO
  7. Maker for Dummies: A Plain English Explanation of the Dai Stablecoin
  8. Designing a price stable currency by Haseeb Qureshi
  9. A skeptic view of stablecoins

State Channels

  1. Compact and very well explained definition
  2. Overview on the Raiden Network
  3. Generalised State Channels on Ethereum
  4. Introducing multi-party state-channels
  5. A state-channels adventure with Counterfactual Rick by SpankChain (SFW!)

Empirical Cryptoeconomics

  1. How manipulation-resistant are Prediction Markets? How manipulation-resistant are Prediction Markets? Our Undertaking in Empirical Cryptoeconomics by Gnosis
  2. Empirical Cryptoeconomics Vitalik Buterin’s post on empirical cryptoeconomics
  3. Testing mechanism design with AI agents Tool for Smart Contract testing with concept paper and intro

Videos

Consensus Protocols

  1. Consensus Consensus Algorithm – Andreas Antonopoulos
  2. Intro to Casper Karl Floersch presenting Ethereum’s Casper PoS
  3. PoS roundtable PoS roundtable with Joseph Poon, Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir, Dominic Williams, Zack Hess at Cryptoeconomicon 2015
  4. PoW roundtable PoW roundtable with Tim Swanson, Vitalik Buterin and Peter Todd at Cryptoeconomicon 2015
  5. Proof of Stake – Technion Cyber and Computer Security Summer School and presentation deck
  6. CESC2017 – Casper Proof of Stake
  7. Hangout – Ethereum PoS: Casper FFG In Depth and the presentation
  8. Hangout – Ethereum PoS: Casper & Smart Contract Consensus Overview and the presentation deck

Cryptoeconomics

  1. Game Theory in Bitcoin Game Theory approach behind the motivation for Bitcoin mining
  2. CESC2017 – Cryptoeconomics in Casper
  3. What is Cryptoeconomics Vlad Zamfir introducing Cryptoeconomics
  4. Introduction to Cryptoeconomics Vitalik Buterin introducing Cryptoeconomics. The corresponding presentation deck is available here
  5. Hard problems in Cryptoeconomics Vitalik Buterin discussing hard problems with cryptoeconomics
  6. The Cryptoeconomic way Vitalik Buterin discussing cryptoeconomics.
  7. Cryptoeconomic Protocols In the Context of Wider Society Vitalik Buterin discussing cryptoeconomics. The corresponding presentation deck is available here
  8. The current state of Cryptoeconomics The current state of Cryptoeconomics by Vlad Zamfir
  9. Programmable Incentives by Karl Floersch at Devcon 3
  10. Hard problems in cryptoeconomics by Vitalik Buterin
  11. Cryptoeconomic Primitives
  12. Global Scale Research Networks and Cryptoeconomics
  13. Towards a Practice of Token Engineering by Trent McConaghy
  14. Cryptoeconomic Theory an on-going series by Viktor Makarskyy with part 1part 2part 3 and part 4

State Channels

  1. The Raiden Network, a technical introduction
  2. Short introduction to the The Raiden Network by Lefteris Karapetsas
  3. State Channels explained in detail by Ameen Soleimani

Cryptoeconomic Security

  1. The costs of hacking Bitcoin Sybil attacks explained
  2. Game theory and Network Attacks- How to destroy Bitcoin by by Max Fang 03/2017
  3. Game theory and Network Attacks- How to destroy Bitcoin by Nadir Akhtar and Aparna Krishnan 11/2017
  4. 51% Attacks: Pools and Game Theory
  5. Nothing at stake Introducing the nothing at stake attack
  6. Security Considerations of the Casper Protocol Vlad Zamfir at Standford’s Blockchain Protocol Analysis and Security Engineering 2017

Cryptography

  1. Cryptography for Cryptocurrency
  2. Bitcoin – Cryptographic hash functions
  3. Hashed based signatures An illustrated primer

Additional

  1. BBC Documentary Adam Curtis’ “Fuck you buddy” BBC documentary

Podcasts

  1. Q&A on Casper Vlad Zamfir answering questions regarding Ethereum’s Casper PoS
  2. PoW attacks Podcast from 2015 on PoW attacks
  3. Cryptoeconomics, Stablecoins, Casper with Vlad Zamfir, and corresponding transcript is available here
  4. Fintech Podcast – Episode 151 Cryptoeconomics as explained by Dr Chris Berg
  5. Cryptoeconomic Primitives by Trent McConaghy

Whitepapers

  1. Bitcoin Whitepaper
  2. Ethereum Whitepaper
  3. Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild
  4. dBFT Whitepaper The Quest for Scalable Blockchain Fabric: Proof-of-Work vs. BFT Replication by IBM Research
  5. Federated Byzantine Agreements by Stellar Development Foundation’s David Mazieres
  6. Research Paper on PoS vs. Pow by Bitfury
  7. Demystifying Incentives in the Consensus Computer
  8. Game Theory approach behind Bitcoin mining
  9. Research Paper on the security model in PoW by ETH Zurich and others
  10. A Note on Limits on Incentive Compatibility and Griefing Factors
  11. Research Paper on eclipse attacks on the Bitcoin Network
  12. Research Paper on eclipse attacks on the Ethereum Network
  13. Research paper on hashrate-based double spend attack
  14. Satoshi Risk Tables
  15. MakerDAO Purple Paper
  16. Sweetbridge Liquidity Protocol
  17. Bancor Protocol
  18. Maker Dai Stablecoin
  19. Curation Markets by Simon de la Rouviere
  20. The Economics of BitCoin Price Formation This paper analyses the relationship between BitCoin price and supply-demand fundamentals of Bitcoin
  21. A Cost of Production Model for Bitcoin
  22. The Bitcoin Backbone Protocol Analysis and Applications
  23. Cryptocurrencies without PoW
  24. Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain

Other Resources

  1. Casper PoS Discourse Ethereum Foundation’s Discourse channel on Casper
  2. Evolution of Trust Fun interactive game by Nicky Case showing the evolution of group trust over time
  3. Formal verification on Casper Formal verification on Casper
  4. Ethresear.ch Casper research topic
  5. CECS – CryptoEconomics Security Conference
  6. Reddit subgroup
  7. Telegram Group
  8. RIAT – Institute for Future Cryptoeconomics a research group from Austria
  9. Cryptoeconomics Asia is an independent research firm
  10. Cryptoeconomics at RMIT University a research group of economists in Australia
  11. Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics Vienna University of Economics and Business
  12. MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab MIT’s first cryptoeconomics lab

Blockchain Hacks and Post-mortems

The DAO

  1. The DAO can turn into a naturally arising Ponzi prescient article by Hacking Distributed
  2. Analysis of the DAO Exploit by Hacking Distributed
  3. Thoughts on the DAO hack by Hacking Distributed

Parity MultiSig

  1. Parity’s Post-mortem
  2. Deep dive into the Parity hack

Bancor

  1. Front-running Bancor in 150 lines of Python

King of Ether

  1. King of Ether Post-mortem

Roulette

  1. Attacking a public RNG article by Martin Swende on attacking a smart contract that used a public Random Number Generator

Additional information and related topics

Behavioural Economics

  1. BE Ted Talk Prof. Dan Ariely’s Ted Talk on Behavioural Economics
  2. Predictably Irrational book Predictably Irrational by Prof. Dan Ariely
  3. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty by Prof. Dan Ariely

Economics

  1. Awesome Economics

Cryptography

  1. Awesome Cryptography

Lightning Network Reference Rate.

I am proposing that the second point on Bitcoin’s risk spectrum should be LNRR, the Lightning Network Reference Rate. Routing fees earned on bitcoin staked to Lightning payment channels can be expressed as an interest rate. The rates received on the payment channel or node level can be hashed and cryptographically provable. Node operators can opt-in to publish realized interest rates on their capital. If a consensus can be reached on an interest rate calculation protocol, capital providers can publish interest rates in an open and transparent way. Positive interest rates will attract bank-like entities that believe they can earn positive return using effective payment channel management and security techniques. Some bitcoin previously held in cold storage will seek the income attainable in Lightning Network, the first ever example of an opportunity cost tradeoff in bitcoin that doesn’t require additional counterparty risk. Bitcoin staked to Lightning is the most unique income producing asset in all of monetary history: income with zero counterparty risk. The historical implications of this on capital markets are tremendous.

https://medium.com/@timevalueofbtc/the-bitcoin-risk-spectrum-949f6abec290?source=linkShare-dc7ae094ae3a-1531198863

Blockchain Economics | Markus K. Brunnermeier

When is record-keeping better arranged through distributed ledger technology (DLT) than through a traditional centralized intermediary? The ideal qualities of any record-keeping system are (i) correctness, (ii) decentralization, and (iii) cost efficiency. We point out a \textit{Blockchain Trilemma}: no ledger can satisfy all three properties simultaneously. A centralized ledger writer extracts rents due to its monopoly on the ledger. Its franchise value dynamically incentivizes honest reporting. Decentralized ledgers provide static incentives for honesty through computationally expensive Proof-of-Work algorithms but eliminate rents through “fork competition.” Portability of information between “forks” and competition among miners fosters competition among decentralized ledgers that is fiercer than traditional competition. However, fork competition can engender instability and miscoordination. While blockchains can keep track of ownership transfers, enforcement of possession rights is still needed in many blockchain applications.

Source: Blockchain Economics | Markus K. Brunnermeier