相关论文: On Finality in Blockchains

Longest-chain blockchain protocols, such as Bitcoin, guarantee liveness even when the number of actively participating users is variable, i.e., they are adaptive. However, they are not safe under network partitions, i.e., they do not…

We define and examine the shutdown problem for blockchain systems: how to gracefully end the system's operation at the end of its useful life. A particular focus is those blockchain systems that hold archival data of long-lived interest. We…

First-generation blockchains provide probabilistic finality: a block can be revoked, albeit the probability decreases as the block sinks deeper into the chain. Recent proposals revisited committee-based BFT consensus to provide…

We present the notion of multilevel slashing, where proof-of-stake blockchain validators can obtain gradual levels of assurance that a certain block is bound to be finalized in a global consensus procedure, unless an increasing and…

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.…

Classic Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocols forfeit liveness in the face of asynchrony in order to preserve safety, whereas most deployed blockchain protocols forfeit safety in order to remain live. In this work, we achieve the…

We study financial transaction confirmation finality in Bitcoin as a function of transaction amount and user risk tolerance. A transaction is recorded in a block on a blockchain. However, a transaction may be revoked due to a fork in the…

We consider blockchain in dynamic networks. We define the Blockchain Decision Problem. It requires miners that maintain the blockchain to confirm whether a particular block is accepted. We establish the necessary conditions for the…

Blockchains combine a distributed append-only log with a virtual machine that defines how log entries are interpreted. By viewing transactions as state transformation functions for the virtual machine, we separate the naming of a state from…

A Confirmation Rule, within blockchain networks, refers to an algorithm implemented by network nodes that determines (either probabilistically or deterministically) the permanence of certain blocks on the blockchain. An example of…

Motivated by proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains such as Ethereum, two key desiderata have recently been studied for Byzantine-fault tolerant (BFT) state-machine replication (SMR) consensus protocols: Finality means that the protocol retains…

Blockchain has become a popular emergent technology in many industries. It is suitable for a broad range of applications, from its base role as an immutable distributed ledger to the deployment of distributed applications. Many…

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…

Public blockchains should be able to scale with respect to the number of nodes and to the transactions workload. The blockchain scalability trilemma has been informally conjectured. This is related to scalability, security and…

The DFINITY blockchain computer provides a secure, performant and flexible consensus mechanism. At its core, DFINITY contains a decentralized randomness beacon which acts as a verifiable random function (VRF) that produces a stream of…

The suitability of a particular blockchain for a given use case depends mainly on the blockchain's functional and non-functional properties. Such properties may vary over time, and thus, a selected blockchain may become unsuitable for a…

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…

This paper develops a model to evaluate the viability of blockchain markets as the sole venue for price formation. Blockchains clear at discrete intervals called block time, and transactions are executed sequentially according to priority…

Gasper, the consensus protocol currently employed by Ethereum, typically requires 64 to 95 slots -- the units of time during which a new chain extending the previous one by one block is proposed and voted -- to finalize. This means that…

The blockchain paradigm provides a mechanism for content dissemination and distributed consensus on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. While this paradigm has been widely adopted in industry, it has not been carefully analyzed in terms of its…