Proof-of-stake blockchain protocols have emerged as a compelling paradigm for organizing distributed ledger systems. In proof-of-stake (PoS), a subset of stakeholders participate in validating a growing ledger of transactions. For the safety and liveness of the underlying system, it is desirable for the set of validators to include multiple independent entities as well as represent a non-negligible percentage of the total stake issued. In this paper, we study a secondary form of participation in the transaction validation process, which takes the form of stake delegation, whereby an agent delegates their stake to an active validator who acts as a stake pool operator. We study payment schemes that reward agents as a function of their collective actions regarding stake pool operation and delegation. Such payment schemes serve as a mechanism to incentivize participation in the validation process while maintaining decentralization. We observe natural trade-offs between these objectives and the total expenditure required to run the relevant payment schemes. Ultimately, we provide a family of payment schemes which can strike different balances between these competing objectives at equilibrium in a Bayesian game theoretic framework.

翻译：权益证明区块链协议已成为组织分布式账本系统的一种引人注目的范式。在权益证明机制中，部分权益持有者参与验证不断增长的交易账本。为确保底层系统的安全性与活性，验证者集合应包含多个独立实体，并代表已发行总权益的不可忽略比例。本文研究交易验证过程中一种次级参与形式——权益委托机制，即参与者将其权益委托给作为权益池运营者的活跃验证者。我们研究根据权益池运营和委托的集体行为来奖励参与者的支付方案。此类支付方案可作为激励验证参与同时保持去中心化的机制。我们观察到这些目标与运行相关支付方案所需总支出之间存在天然权衡。最终，我们提出一系列支付方案，这些方案能在贝叶斯博弈论框架的均衡状态下，在这些竞争目标之间实现不同平衡。