A Solomonic Solution to Ownership Disputes: An Application to Blockchain Front-Running

Joshua Gans and Richard Holden

No 29780, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Blockchain front-running involves multiple agents, other than the legitimate agent, claiming a payment from performing a contract. It arises because of the public nature of blockchain transactions and potential network congestion. This paper notes that disputes over payments are similar to classic ownership disputes (such as King Solomon's dilemma). We propose a simultaneous report mechanism that resolves Solomon's dilemma (using only ordinal preference information) and also eliminates blockchain front-running. In each case, the mechanism relies on threats to remove ownership from all claimants and preferences from the legitimate claimant over allocations to other agents.

JEL-codes: D82 D86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cta, nep-des, nep-mic and nep-pay
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29780.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29780

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29780

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().