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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…
Overlay management is the cornerstone of building robust and dependable Peer-to-Peer systems. A key component for building such overlays is the peer-sampling service, a mechanism that continuously supplies each node with a set of up-to-date…
A family of leaderless, decentralized consensus protocols, called Snow consensus was introduced in a recent whitepaper by Yin et al. These protocols address limitations of existing consensus methods, such as those using proof-of-work or…
Some blockchain networks employ a distributed consensus algorithm featuring Byzantine fault tolerance. Notably, certain public chains, such as Cosmos and Tezos, which operate on a proof-of-stake mechanism, have adopted this algorithm. While…
Vote-based blockchains construct a state machine replication (SMR) system among participating nodes, using Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus protocols to transition from one state to another. Currently, they rely on either…
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)…
This thesis proposes techniques aiming to make blockchain technologies and smart contract platforms practical by improving their scalability, latency, and privacy. This thesis starts by presenting the design and implementation of…
Blockchain consensus is a state whereby each node in a network agrees on the current state of the blockchain. Existing protocols achieve consensus via a contest or voting procedure to select one node as a dictator to propose new blocks.…
The popularization of blockchains leads to a resurgence of interest in Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) state machine replication protocols. However, much of the work on this topic focuses on the underlying consensus protocols, with emphasis…
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 present an algorithm for synchronous deterministic Byzantine consensus, tolerant to links failures and links asynchrony. It cares for a class of networks with specific needs, where both safety and liveness are essential, and timely…
Consensus in decentralized systems that asynchronously receive events and which are subject to Byzantine faults is a common problem with many real-life applications. Advances in decentralized systems, such as distributed ledger (i.e.,…
Bitcoin's single leader consensus protocol (Nakamoto consensus) suffers from significant transaction throughput and network scalability issues due to the computational requirements of it Proof-of-Work (PoW) based leader selection strategy.…
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), when managed by a few trusted validators, require most but not all of the machinery available in public DLTs. In this work, we explore one possible way to profit from this state of affairs. We devise…
Consensus protocols inherently rely on the notion of leader election, in which one or a subset of participants are temporarily elected to authorize and announce the network's latest state. While leader election is a well studied problem,…
Fueled by the growing popularity of proof-of-stake blockchains, there has been increasing interest and progress in permissioned consensus protocols, which could provide a simpler alternative to existing protocols, such as Paxos and PBFT. In…
The practical Byzantine fault tolerant (PBFT) consensus mechanism is one of the most basic consensus algorithms (or protocols) in blockchain technologies, thus its performance evaluation is an interesting and challenging topic due to a…
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…
Since the inception of Bitcoin, the distributed systems community has shown interest in the design of efficient blockchain systems. However, initial blockchain applications (like Bitcoin) attain very low throughput, which has promoted the…
Consensus is one of the most fundamental distributed computing problems. In particular, it serves as a building block in many replication based fault-tolerant systems and in particular in multiple recent blockchain solutions. Depending on…