Related papers: The Economic Limits of Permissionless Consensus
Average consensus is key for distributed networks, with applications ranging from network synchronization, distributed information fusion, decentralized control, to load balancing for parallel processors. Existing average consensus…
Protocols for tossing a common coin play a key role in the vast majority of implementations of consensus. Even though the common coins in the literature are usually \emph{fair} (they have equal chance of landing heads or tails), we focus on…
The problem of computing a common point that lies in the intersection of a finite number of closed convex sets, each known to one agent in a network, is studied. This issue, known as the distributed convex feasibility problem or the…
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…
Many protocols in distributed computing rely on a source of randomness, usually called a random beacon, both for their applicability and security. This is especially true for proof-of-stake blockchain protocols in which the next miner or…
We improve the fundamental security threshold of eventual consensus Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain protocols under the longest-chain rule by showing, for the first time, the positive effect of rounds with concurrent honest leaders. Current…
This paper investigates under which conditions information can be reliably shared and consensus can be solved in unknown and anonymous message-passing networks that suffer from crash-failures. We provide algorithms to emulate registers and…
Distributed architectures are used to improve performance and reliability of various systems. Examples include drone swarms and load-balancing servers. An important capability of a distributed architecture is the ability to reach consensus…
The constrained consensus problem considered in this paper, denoted interval consensus, is characterized by the fact that each agent can impose a lower and upper bound on the achievable consensus value. Such constraints can be encoded in…
Building consensus sequences based on distributed, fault-tolerant consensus, as used for replicated state machines, typically requires a separate distributed state for every new consensus instance. Allocating and maintaining this state…
We propose a novel distributed monetary system called Hearsay that tolerates both Byzantine and rational behavior without the need for agents to reach consensus on executed transactions. Recent work [5, 10, 15] has shown that distributed…
Consensus protocols used today in blockchains often rely on computational power or financial stakes - scarce resources. We propose a novel protocol using social capital - trust and influence from social interactions - as a non-transferable…
In a sensor network, in practice, the communication among sensors is subject to:(1) errors or failures at random times; (3) costs; and(2) constraints since sensors and networks operate under scarce resources, such as power, data rate, or…
Decentralized coordination is one of the fundamental challenges for societies and organizations. While extensively explored from a variety of perspectives, one issue which has received limited attention is human coordination in the presence…
This paper addresses the distributed consensus protocol design problem for linear multi-agent systems with directed graphs and external unmatched disturbances. A novel distributed adaptive consensus protocol is proposed to achieve…
In this brief paper, a new consensus protocol based on the sign of innovations is proposed. Based on this protocol each agent only requires single-bit of information about its relative state to its neighboring agents. This is significant in…
Consensus algorithms play a critical role in blockchains and directly impact their performance. During consensus processing, nodes need to validate and order the pending transactions into a new block, which requires verifying the…
In this paper, we study distributed consensus in synchronous systems subject to both unexpected crash failures and strategic manipulations by rational agents in the system. We adapt the concept of collusion-resistant Nash equilibrium to…
Scalability problems in programmable blockchains have created a strong demand for secure methods that move the bulk of computation outside the blockchain. One of the preferred solutions to this problem involves off-chain computers that…
A networked system can be made resilient against adversaries and attacks if the underlying network graph is structurally robust. For instance, to achieve distributed consensus in the presence of adversaries, the underlying network graph…