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Dynamic Posted-Price Mechanisms for the Blockchain Transaction Fee Market

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  • Matheus V. X. Ferreira
  • Daniel J. Moroz
  • David C. Parkes
  • Mitchell Stern

Abstract

In recent years, prominent blockchain systems such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have experienced explosive growth in transaction volume, leading to frequent surges in demand for limited block space and causing transaction fees to fluctuate by orders of magnitude. Existing systems sell space using first-price auctions; however, users find it difficult to estimate how much they need to bid in order to get their transactions accepted onto the chain. If they bid too low, their transactions can have long confirmation times. If they bid too high, they pay larger fees than necessary. In light of these issues, new transaction fee mechanisms have been proposed, most notably EIP-1559, aiming to provide better usability. EIP-1559 is a history-dependent mechanism that relies on block utilization to adjust a base fee. We propose an alternative design -- a {\em dynamic posted-price mechanism} -- which uses not only block utilization but also observable bids from past blocks to compute a posted price for subsequent blocks. We show its potential to reduce price volatility by providing examples for which the prices of EIP-1559 are unstable while the prices of the proposed mechanism are stable. More generally, whenever the demand for the blockchain stabilizes, we ask if our mechanism is able to converge to a stable state. Our main result provides sufficient conditions in a probabilistic setting for which the proposed mechanism is approximately welfare optimal and the prices are stable. Our main technical contribution towards establishing stability is an iterative algorithm that, given oracle access to a Lipschitz continuous and strictly concave function $f$, converges to a fixed point of $f$.

Suggested Citation

  • Matheus V. X. Ferreira & Daniel J. Moroz & David C. Parkes & Mitchell Stern, 2021. "Dynamic Posted-Price Mechanisms for the Blockchain Transaction Fee Market," Papers 2103.14144, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2021.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2103.14144
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Benjamin Edelman & Michael Ostrovsky & Michael Schwarz, 2007. "Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second-Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 242-259, March.
    2. Mohammad Akbarpour & Shengwu Li, 2020. "Credible Auctions: A Trilemma," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 425-467, March.
    3. John Kennan, 2001. "Uniqueness of Positive Fixed Points for Increasing Concave Functions on Rn: An Elementary Result," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(4), pages 893-899, October.
    4. Goldberg, Andrew V. & Hartline, Jason D. & Karlin, Anna R. & Saks, Michael & Wright, Andrew, 2006. "Competitive auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 242-269, May.
    5. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Matheus V. X. Ferreira & Ye Lin Sally Hahn & S. Matthew Weinberg & Catherine Yu, 2022. "Optimal Strategic Mining Against Cryptographic Self-Selection in Proof-of-Stake," Papers 2207.07996, arXiv.org.
    2. Matheus V. X. Ferreira & David C. Parkes, 2022. "Credible Decentralized Exchange Design via Verifiable Sequencing Rules," Papers 2209.15569, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    3. Matheus V. X. Ferreira & S. Matthew Weinberg, 2021. "Proof-of-Stake Mining Games with Perfect Randomness," Papers 2107.04069, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2021.
    4. Yulin Liu & Yuxuan Lu & Kartik Nayak & Fan Zhang & Luyao Zhang & Yinhong Zhao, 2022. "Empirical Analysis of EIP-1559: Transaction Fees, Waiting Time, and Consensus Security," Papers 2201.05574, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    5. Maryam Bahrani & Pranav Garimidi & Tim Roughgarden, 2023. "Transaction Fee Mechanism Design with Active Block Producers," Papers 2307.01686, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    6. Hao Chung & Elaine Shi, 2021. "Foundations of Transaction Fee Mechanism Design," Papers 2111.03151, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    7. Kim, Daehan & Ryu, Doojin & Webb, Robert I., 2023. "Determination of equilibrium transaction fees in the Bitcoin network: A rank-order contest," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    8. Luyao Zhang & Fan Zhang, 2023. "Understand Waiting Time in Transaction Fee Mechanism: An Interdisciplinary Perspective," Papers 2305.02552, arXiv.org.
    9. Hao Chung & Tim Roughgarden & Elaine Shi, 2024. "Collusion-Resilience in Transaction Fee Mechanism Design," Papers 2402.09321, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    10. Meryem Essaidi & Matheus V. X. Ferreira & S. Matthew Weinberg, 2022. "Credible, Strategyproof, Optimal, and Bounded Expected-Round Single-Item Auctions for all Distributions," Papers 2205.14758, arXiv.org.

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