Related papers: A Unifying Hybrid Consensus Protocol
This work interprets and generalizes consensus-type algorithms as switching dynamics leading to symmetrization of some vector variables with respect to the actions of a finite group. We show how the symmetrization framework we develop…
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…
Since the invention of Bitcoin one decade ago, numerous cryptocurrencies have sprung into existence. Among these, proof-of-work is the most common mechanism for achieving consensus, whilst a number of coins have adopted "ASIC-resistance" as…
Blockchain-based IoT systems can manage IoT devices and achieve a high level of data integrity, security, and provenance. However, incorporating the existing consensus protocols in many IoT systems limits scalability and leads to high…
This paper introduces EarthOL, a novel consensus protocol that attempts to replace computational waste in blockchain systems with verifiable human contributions within bounded domains. While recognizing the fundamental impossibility of…
Due to the increasing interest in blockchain technology for fostering secure, auditable, decentralized applications, a set of challenges associated with this technology need to be addressed. In this letter, we focus on the delay associated…
Sybil resistance is a key requirement of decentralized consensus protocols. It is achieved by introducing a scarce resource (such as computational power, monetary stake, disk space, etc.), which prevents participants from costlessly…
Proof of work blockchain protocols using multiple hash types are considered. It is proven that the security region of such a protocol cannot be the AND of a 51\% attack on all the hash types. Nevertheless, a protocol called Merged Bitcoin…
Distributed algorithms solving agreement problems like consensus or state machine replication are essential components of modern fault-tolerant distributed services. They are also notoriously hard to understand and reason about. Their…
A hard-fork reconfiguration of the peer to peer Bitcoin network is described that substitutes tamper-evident logs and proof-of-stake consensus for proof-of-work consensus. The block creation rewards and transaction fees are reallocated to…
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a fundamental underlying technology behind most major blockchain cryptocurrencies. It has been previously pointed out that quantum devices provide a computational advantage in performing PoW in the context of Bitcoin.…
In this paper, we propose two models for scaling the transaction throughput in Proof-of-Work (PoW) based blockchain networks. In the first approach, a mathematical model has derived for optimal transaction throughput for PoW based longest…
Ethereum has undergone a recent change called \textit{the Merge}, which made Ethereum a Proof-of-Stake blockchain, shifting closer to BFT consensus. Ethereum, which wished to keep the best of the two protocol designs (BFT and…
Blockchain stores information into a chain of "blocks", whose integrity is usually guaranteed by Proof of Work (PoW). In many blockchain applications (including cryptocurrencies), users compete with each other to win the ownership of the…
Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus forms the foundation of many modern blockchains striving for both high throughput and low latency. A growing bottleneck is transaction execution and validation on the critical path of consensus,…
We study long-term equilibria that arise in the token monetary policy, or tokenomics, design of proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain systems that engage utility maximizing users and validators. Validators are system maintainers who get rewarded…
Blockchains with smart contracts are distributed ledger systems that achieve block-state consistency among distributed nodes by only allowing deterministic operations of smart contracts. However, the power of smart contracts is enabled by…
The state-of-the-art HotStuff operates an efficient pipeline in which a stable leader drives decisions with linear communication and two round-trips of message. However, the unifying proposing-voting pattern is not sufficient to improve the…
Topos is an open interoperability protocol designed to reduce as much as possible trust assumptions by replacing them with cryptographic constructions and decentralization while exhibiting massive scalability. The protocol does not make use…
Bitcoin is the first successful decentralized global digital cash system. Its mining process requires intense computational resources, therefore its usefulness remains a disputable topic. We aim to solve three problems with Bitcoin and…