Raman Kalra has kindly agreed to lead a discussion on the following paper on Wednesday, Nov 16.

We will discuss the paper titled ‘Blockchain-Free Cryptocurrencies’ by Boyen et al. (https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/871.pdf).

The authors present a novel framework to design cryptocurrencies without using any blockchain. Instead, a chain of transactions is formed that is driven forward by Proof-of-Work (PoW) implemented at the transaction level. Without blocks, the chain of transactions turns into a directed graph whose consensus algorithm is that the transaction with the maximum cumulative PoW prevails. In addition to transferring coins, the transactions also perform the roles of minting new coins, processing fees and validating previous transactions.

Can Bitcoin use this framework to decentralize mining and reduce the time for transaction verification?