2023/06/03 by Mamageishvili, Akaki, Kelkar, Mahimna, Schlegel, Jan Christoph +1 · 4 citations
#Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Economics and business #Theoretical Economics (econ.TH)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.02179
We design TimeBoost: a practical transaction ordering policy for rollup sequencers that takes into account both transaction timestamps and bids; it works by creating a score from timestamps and bids, and orders transactions based on this score. TimeBoost is transaction-data-independent (i.e., can work with encrypted transactions) and supports low transaction finalization times similar to a first-come first-serve (FCFS or pure-latency) ordering policy. At the same time, it avoids the inefficient latency competition created by an FCFS policy. It further satisfies useful economic properties of first-price auctions that come with a pure-bidding policy. We show through rigorous economic analyses how TimeBoost allows players to compete on arbitrage opportunities in a way that results in better guarantees compared to both pure-latency and pure-bidding approaches.