Public defence in Economics, MBA Amin Mohazab Rahimzadeh

Title of the thesis: Essays on Blockchain Technology and Digital Economics

Doctoral student: Amin Mohazab Rahimzadeh
Opponent: Doctor Saara Hämäläinen, University of Helsinki
Custos: Professor Otto Toivanen, Aalto University School of Business, Department of Economics

Bitcoin Payment System is the first and the most prominent decentralized protocol to send monetary transactions worldwide. In other words, it guarantees secure payments without the need for any regulation framework. However, it suffers from the problem of scalability since it is only capable of sending 7-10 transactions per second.

In this thesis, we try to analyze the incentives of the miners in the Bitcoin network and answer the questions regarding the miners takeaways from participating in the protocol, welfare of the participants in the network, and manipulation or collusion incentives of the miners (as service providers) to exclude transactions from the blocks and induce fake congestion and higher fees. In conclusion, we realized that although block creation is a decentralized procedure in most blockchains, transaction selection within blocks usually follows a centralized mechanism and is vulnerable to destructive behaviors.

Key words: blockchain, bitcoin payment system, crypto economics

Thesis available for public display 10 days prior to the defence at: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/doc_public/eonly/riiputus/

Zoom Quick Guide: https://www.aalto.fi/en/services/zoom-quick-guide

Contact information:

Amin Mohazab
amin.mohazabrahimzadeh@aalto.fi