We prove lower bounds on the round complexity of randomized Byzantine agreement (BA) protocols, bounding the halting probability of such protocols after one and two rounds. In particular, we prove that: 1) BA protocols resilient against n/3 [resp., n/4] corruptions terminate (under attack) at the end of the first round with probability at most o(1) [resp., 1/2+ o(1)]. 2) BA protocols resilient against n/4 corruptions terminate at the end of the second round with probability at most 1-Theta(1). 3) For a large class of protocols (including all BA protocols used in practice) and under a plausible combinatorial conjecture, BA protocols resilient against n/3 [resp., n/4] corruptions terminate at the end of the second round with probability at most o(1) [resp., 1/2 + o(1)]. The above bounds hold even when the parties use a trusted setup phase, e.g., a public-key infrastructure (PKI). The third bound essentially matches the recent protocol of Micali (ITCS'17) that tolerates up to n/3 corruptions and terminates at the end of the third round with constant probability.
@InProceedings{cohen_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2019.12, author = {Cohen, Ran and Haitner, Iftach and Makriyannis, Nikolaos and Orland, Matan and Samorodnitsky, Alex}, title = {{On the Round Complexity of Randomized Byzantine Agreement}}, booktitle = {33rd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2019)}, pages = {12:1--12:17}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-126-9}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2019}, volume = {146}, editor = {Suomela, Jukka}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2019.12}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-113199}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2019.12}, annote = {Keywords: Byzantine agreement, lower bound, round complexity} }
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