Related papers: Albatross: An optimistic consensus algorithm
The choice of the consensus method ultimately determines throughput, scalability, tamper resistance, and consistency of a blockchain system. However, across all the types of blockchain (private, semi-private, consortium, or public), there…
Synchronous consensus protocols offer a significant advantage over their asynchronous and partially synchronous counterparts by providing higher fault tolerance -- an essential benefit in distributed systems, like blockchains, where…
In the light of the recent fame of Blockchain technologies, numerous proposals and projects aiming at better practical viability have emerged. However, formally assessing their particularities and benefits has proven to be a difficult task.…
We present Carnot, a leader-based Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol that is responsive and operates under the partially synchronous model. Responsive BFT consensus protocols exhibit wire-speed operation and deliver…
Blockchain is an essentially distributed database recording all transactions or digital events among participating parties. Each transaction in the records is approved and verified by consensus of the participants in the system that…
Blockchain as a promising technology is gaining its popularity ever since proof-of-work based Bitcoin came to the world. Nevertheless, Bitcoin achieves consensus at an expensive cost of energy. Proof-of-stake is one of the solutions for…
Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols ensure agreement on transaction ordering despite malicious actors, but unconstrained ordering power enables sophisticated value extraction attacks like front running and sandwich attacks -…
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…
We present two attacks targeting the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Ethereum consensus protocol. The first attack suggests a fundamental conceptual incompatibility between PoS and the Greedy Heaviest-Observed Sub-Tree (GHOST) fork choice paradigm…
We present Egalitarian BFT (EBFT), a simple and high-performance framework of BFT consensus protocols for decentralized systems like blockchains. The key innovation in EBFT is egalitarian block generation: nodes randomly and…
Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) consensus is a fundamental primitive for distributed computation. However, BFT protocols suffer from the ordering manipulation, in which an adversary can make front-running. Several protocols are proposed to…
Decentralization is a foundational principle of permissionless blockchains, with consensus mechanisms serving a critical role in its realization. This study quantifies the decentralization of consensus mechanisms in proof-of-stake (PoS)…
Existing research on federated learning has been focused on the setting where learning is coordinated by a centralized entity. Yet the greatest potential of future collaborative intelligence would be unleashed in a more open and…
We present a novel method for a multi-party, zero-trust validator infrastructure deployment arrangement via smart contracts to secure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains. The proposed arrangement architecture employs a combination of…
There has been recently a lot of progress in designing efficient partially synchronous BFT consensus protocols that are meant to serve as core consensus engines for Proof of Stake blockchain systems. While the state-of-the-art solutions…
Most online lotteries today fail to ensure the verifiability of the random process and rely on a trusted third party. This issue has received little attention since the emergence of distributed protocols like Bitcoin that demonstrated the…
Blockchain technology has been proposed as a new infrastructure technology for a wide variety of novel applications. Blockchains provide an immutable record of transactions, making them useful when business actors do not trust each other.…
Consensus mechanism is the heart of any blockchain network. Many projects have proposed alternative protocols to improve restricted scalability of Proof of Work originated since Bitcoin. As an improvement of Delegated Proof of Stake, in…
Blockchains, and specifically smart contracts, have promised to create fair and transparent trading ecosystems. Unfortunately, we show that this promise has not been met. We document and quantify the widespread and rising deployment of…
This paper presents a study of the Poof-of-Stake (PoW) Ethereum consensus protocol, following the recent switch from Proof-of-Work (PoS) to Proof-of-Stake within Merge upgrade. The new protocol has resulted in reduced energy consumption and…