> I'm currently reading Digital Gold by Nathaniel. As I progress, its clearer that bitcoin might or might not be a great economic tool but its an awesome case study in game theory.
Yes, and you can abstract that observation from blockchains to cryptography in general, which is the underlying foundation of blockchain technology’s game theoretic fault tolerance. This is particularly clear once you move closer to cryptography’s theoretical and mathematical foundations and away from specific applications (such as encryption or authentication).
Many cryptography textbooks begin with an elementary definition and discussion of the field using notions such as confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, etc. These are all correct, but I prefer Oded Goldreich’s definition, from his Foundations of Cryptography:
Cryptography is concerned with any problem in which one wishes to limit the effects of dishonest users.
In an abstract sense, cryptography has a direct mapping from game theory, and can be considered the use of computational complexity to resolve scenarios in adversarial relationships.
If you’re enjoying looking at blockchains through this lens, you might want to read a few papers on cryptogenography, or zero knowledge proofs (the latter has far more literature). There is also a lot of fun research that uses game theory to model fault tolerance and economics in blockchains.
Yes, and you can abstract that observation from blockchains to cryptography in general, which is the underlying foundation of blockchain technology’s game theoretic fault tolerance. This is particularly clear once you move closer to cryptography’s theoretical and mathematical foundations and away from specific applications (such as encryption or authentication).
Many cryptography textbooks begin with an elementary definition and discussion of the field using notions such as confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation, etc. These are all correct, but I prefer Oded Goldreich’s definition, from his Foundations of Cryptography:
Cryptography is concerned with any problem in which one wishes to limit the effects of dishonest users.
In an abstract sense, cryptography has a direct mapping from game theory, and can be considered the use of computational complexity to resolve scenarios in adversarial relationships.
If you’re enjoying looking at blockchains through this lens, you might want to read a few papers on cryptogenography, or zero knowledge proofs (the latter has far more literature). There is also a lot of fun research that uses game theory to model fault tolerance and economics in blockchains.