Lay Down the Common Metrics - Evaluating Proof of Work Consensus Protocols' Security

Explore a comprehensive analysis of Proof of Work (PoW) consensus protocols' security in this 18-minute conference talk presented at the 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy. Delve into the challenges faced by Nakamoto Consensus and subsequent cryptocurrency designs in achieving perfect chain quality and defending against attacks like selfish mining, double-spending, and feather-forking. Examine a multi-metric evaluation framework that quantitatively analyzes PoW protocols' chain quality and attack resistance using Markov decision processes. Discover why no current PoW protocol achieves ideal chain quality or complete attack resistance, and uncover new protocol-specific attack strategies. Gain insights into the dilemma between "rewarding the bad" and "punishing the good" in existing protocols, and explore future directions for developing more secure PoW protocols while avoiding common pitfalls in security analyses.