Principles of Blockchain Systems

Preface.- Acknowledgments.- Cryptographic Tools for Blockchains.- A Consensus Taxonomy in the Blockchain Era.- The Next 700 Smart Contract Languages.- Formalization of Blockchain Properties.- Adversarial Cross-Chain Commerce.- Strategic Interactions in Blockchain: A Survey of Game-Theoretic Approaches.- Bankruptcy Solutions as Reward Functions in Mining Pools.- Tokens and ICOs: A Review of the Economic Literature.- Editors' Biographies.

Antonio Fernández Anta is a Research Professor at IMDEA Networks. Previously he was on the faculty of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) and the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), where he received an award for his research productivity. He was a postdoc at MIT from 1995 to 1997, and spent sabbatical years at Bell Labs Murray Hill and MIT Media Lab. He was awarded the Premio Nacional de Informatica "Aritmel" in 2019 and has been a Mercator Fellow of the SFB MAKI in Germany since 2018. He has more than 25 years of research experience, and more than 200 scientific publications. He was the Chair of the Steering Committee of DISC and has served in the TPC of numerous conferences and workshops. He received his MSc and PhD from the University of SW Louisiana in 1992 and 1994, respectively. He completed his undergraduate studies at the UPM, having received awards at the university and national level for his academic performance. He is a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE.Chryssis Georgiou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cyprus. He holds a PhD (2003) and MSc (2002) in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Connecticut. His research interests span the theory and practice of fault-tolerant distributed computing with a focus on algorithms and complexity. Recent research topics include the specification and implementation of distributed ledgers, the design and implementation of fault-tolerant and strongly consistent distributed storage systems, and the design and analysis of self-stabilizing distributed systems. He has published more than 100 articles in journals and conference proceedings in his area of study and he has co-authored two books on robust distributed cooperative computing. He has served on several program committees ofconferences in distributed and parallel computing and on the steering committees of DISC and ACM PODC (he is currently chairing the steering committee). He served as the