The Algorithmic Evolution of Blockchain Fee Design

Written by escholar | Published 2025/10/13
Tech Story Tags: blockchain-economics | proof-of-stake-mining | transaction-fee-mechanisms | online-buffer-management | non-myopic-miners | blockchain-auction-design | blockchain-auction-theory | deadline-aware-blockchain

TLDRThis section examines the gap in current blockchain Transaction Fee Mechanism (TFM) research, noting that most models assume myopic miners and ignore time-sensitive transactions. By introducing the concept of transaction expiry and connecting it to auction theory, packet scheduling, and real-world analogies like ride-sharing, the work expands on existing algorithms (e.g., RMIX, MG) to show how incorporating urgency and discount factors could lead to more efficient and fair blockchain fee systems.via the TL;DR App

Abstract and 1. Introduction

1.1 Our Approach

1.2 Our Results & Roadmap

1.3 Related Work

  1. Model and Warmup and 2.1 Blockchain Model

    2.2 The Miner

    2.3 Game Model

    2.4 Warm Up: The Greedy Allocation Function

  2. The Deterministic Case and 3.1 Deterministic Upper Bound

    3.2 The Immediacy-Biased Class Of Allocation Function

  3. The Randomized Case

  4. Discussion and References

1.2 Our Results & Roadmap

The application of auction theory to the design of TFMs was explored by a line of works [LSZ22; Yao18; BEOS19; Rou21; CS23], that focused primarily on the axiomatic aspects of the blockchain setting when considering myopic miners.

Considerations such as transactions with a finite time to live and non-myopic miners are outside the scope of all the above literature and is a recognized important gap in our understanding of TFMs. Although we focus on the TFM of Blockchain systems, the addition of a predefined expiry date for transactions means that the setting is related to other resource allocation under time-constraints problems. Some examples are deadline-aware job scheduling [SC16] and ride-sharing [DSSX21]. The closest model to ours is perhaps that of Fiat et al. [FGKK16], who analyze a similar framework that considers single-minded users who assign both a fee and some urgency to their requests.

The literature of packet scheduling also considered randomized algorithms and upper bounds. [CCFJST06] suggested a randomized algorithm that works, similarly to MG, by considering the heaviest packet vs. the best early-deadline packet, but uses a randomized coefficient to determine which of them to choose. We show that [CCFJST06] can be generalized to depend on the discount factor. Our generalization is the same as RMIX when λ = 1, and the same as the greedy algorithm when λ = 0, where it achieves the optimal competitive ratio of 1. [BCJ11] extended RMIX analysis from the oblivious to the adaptive adversary, and also provided an upper bound for any randomized algorithm against the adaptive adversary. We show how to extend their construction to depend on the discount factor. An overview of the packet scheduling literature, including open problems in the field, can be found in [Ves21]. While we do not attempt to give a conclusive overview, we note that there is an alternative literature to that of packet scheduling with deadlines, that considers analysis of whether or not to accept packets to a FIFO queue, and there, a latency sensitive model was previously considered [FMN08].

Authors:

(1) Yotam Gafni, Weizmann Institute ([email protected]);

(2) Aviv Yaish, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem ([email protected]).


This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license.


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Published by HackerNoon on 2025/10/13