Decentralized Mechanism Design
Abstract
In transaction fee mechanism design, users bid to get their transactions confirmed in the block. Classical auctions completely fail in such a decentralized environment where even the auctioneer (i.e., miners) can be a strategic player. Further, the miners can collude with a subset of the users, e.g., facilitated by real-world platforms like Flashbots. A line of works have attempted to devise a "dream" transaction fee mechanism but all have failed. In this talk, I will first show that this is not a coincidence --- in fact, there is a fundamental mathematical barrier towards achieving a "dream" transaction fee mechanism. Then, I will explain how to overcome impossibilities with the help of cryptography, leading to practical mechanisms that achieve good social welfare and revenue.
Bio
Elaine Shi is associate professor in computer science from CMU. Before that, she held position at Cornell. Her research includes included blockchain and smart contracts, secure distributed systems, and cryptographic techniques for encrypted computation. She is a recipient of a Packard Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, an ONR YIP award.
