Related papers: Rationals vs Byzantines in Consensus-based Blockch…
Blockchain technology offers a decentralized and secure method for storing and authenticating data, rendering it well-suited for various applications such as digital currencies, supply chain management, and voting systems. However, the…
Blockchain systems benefit from lessons in prior art such as fault tolerance, distributed systems, peer-to-peer systems, and game theory. In this paper we argue that blockchain algorithms should tolerate both rational (self-interested)…
Byzantine general problem is the core problem of the consensus algorithm, and many protocols are proposed recently to improve the decentralization level, the performance and the security of the blockchain. There are two challenging issues…
Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithms are at the core of providing safety and liveness guarantees for distributed systems that must operate in the presence of arbitrary failures. Recently, numerous new BFT algorithms have been…
Despite the popularity and practical applicability of blockchains, there is very limited work on the theoretical foundation of blockchains: The lack of rigorous theory and analysis behind the curtain of blockchains has severely staggered…
The problem of Byzantine consensus has been key to designing secure distributed systems. However, it is particularly difficult, mainly due to the presence of Byzantine processes that act arbitrarily and the unknown message delays in general…
Blockchain systems need to solve consensus despite the presence of rational users and failures. The notion of $(k,t)$-robustness has shown instrumental to list problems that cannot be solved if $k$ players are rational and $t$ players are…
Byzantine agreement, the underlying core of blockchain, aims to make every node in a decentralized network reach consensus. Classical Byzantine agreements unavoidably face two major problems. One is $1/3$ fault-tolerance bound, which means…
It is impossible to solve the Byzantine consensus problem in an open network of $n$ participants if only $2n/3$ or less of them are correct. As blockchains need to solve consensus, one might think that blockchains need more than $2n/3$…
The problem of Byzantine consensus has been key to designing secure distributed systems. However, it is particularly difficult, mainly due to the presence of Byzantine processes that act arbitrarily and the unknown message delays in general…
To implement a blockchain, the trend is now to integrate a non-trivial Byzantine fault tolerant consensus algorithm instead of the seminal idea of waiting to receive blocks to decide upon the longest branch. After a decade of existence,…
Fault tolerance of a blockchain is often characterized by the fraction $f$ of "adversarial power" that it can tolerate in the system. Despite the fast progress in blockchain designs in recent years, existing blockchain systems can still…
This position paper presents a synthesis viewpoint of blockchains from two orthogonal perspectives: fault-tolerant distributed systems and game theory. Specifically, we formulate a new game-theoretical problem in the context of blockchains…
This paper introduces a deterministic Byzantine consensus algorithm that relies on a new weak coordinator. As opposed to previous algorithms that cannot terminate in the presence of a faulty or slow coordinator, our algorithm can terminate…
Existing Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols address only threshold failures, where the participating nodes fail independently of each other, each one fails equally likely, and the protocol's guarantees follow from a simple…
Trust is the basis of any distributed, fault-tolerant, or secure system. A trust assumption specifies the failures that a system, such as a blockchain network, can tolerate and determines the conditions under which it operates correctly. In…
Cooperation is fundamental for human prosperity. Blockchain, as a trust machine, is a cooperative institution in cyberspace that supports cooperation through distributed trust with consensus protocols. While studies in computer science…
Numerous distributed tasks have to be handled in a setting where a fraction of nodes behaves Byzantine, that is, deviates arbitrarily from the intended protocol. Resilient, deterministic protocols rely on the detection of majorities to…
The practical Byzantine fault tolerant (PBFT) consensus protocol is one of the basic consensus protocols in the development of blockchain technology. At the same time, the PBFT consensus protocol forms a basis for some other important BFT…
Blockchain protocols typically aspire to run in the permissionless setting, in which nodes are owned and operated by a large number of diverse and unknown entities, with each node free to start or stop running the protocol at any time. This…