Document Open Access Logo

Byzantine Consensus in the Random Asynchronous Model

Authors George Danezis , Jovan Komatovic , Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias , Alberto Sonnino , Igor Zablotchi

PDF

File

Thumbnail PDF
PDF
LIPIcs.DISC.2025.28.pdf
  • Filesize: 0.79 MB
  • 22 pages

Document Identifiers

Related Versions

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Computing methodologies → Distributed algorithms
Keywords
  • network model
  • asynchronous
  • random scheduler
  • Byzantine consensus

Metrics

  • Access Statistics
  • Total Accesses (updated on a weekly basis)
    0
    PDF Downloads
    0
    Metadata Views

Abstract

We propose a novel relaxation of the classic asynchronous network model, called the random asynchronous model, which removes adversarial message scheduling while preserving unbounded message delays and Byzantine faults. Instead of an adversary dictating message order, delivery follows a random schedule. We analyze Byzantine consensus at different resilience thresholds (n = 3f+1, n = 2f+1, and n = f+2) and show that our relaxation allows consensus with probabilistic guarantees which are impossible in the standard asynchronous model or even the partially synchronous model. We complement these protocols with corresponding impossibility results, establishing the limits of consensus in the random asynchronous model.

Cite As Get BibTex

George Danezis, Jovan Komatovic, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, and Igor Zablotchi. Byzantine Consensus in the Random Asynchronous Model. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 28:1-28:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.28

Author Details

George Danezis
  • Mysten Labs, London, UK
  • University College London, UK
Jovan Komatovic
  • EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias
  • Mysten Labs, Athens, Greece
Alberto Sonnino
  • Mysten Labs, London, UK
  • University College London, UK
Igor Zablotchi
  • Mysten Labs, Zurich, Switzerland

References

  1. Amitanand S. Aiyer, Lorenzo Alvisi, and Rida A. Bazzi. On the availability of non-strict quorum systems. In Distributed Computing, 19th International Conference, DISC 2005, Cracow, Poland, September 26-29, 2005, Proceedings, volume 3724, pages 48-62. Springer, 2005. URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/11561927_6.
  2. Dan Alistarh, Keren Censor-Hillel, and Nir Shavit. Are lock-free concurrent algorithms practically wait-free? J. ACM, 63(4):31:1-31:20, 2016. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2903136.
  3. Dan Alistarh, Thomas Sauerwald, and Milan Vojnovic. Lock-free algorithms under stochastic schedulers. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC 2015, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, July 21 - 23, 2015, pages 251-260. ACM, 2015. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2767386.2767430.
  4. James Aspnes. Fast deterministic consensus in a noisy environment. J. Algorithms, 45(1):16-39, 2002. URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-6774(02)00220-1.
  5. Diogo Avelas, Hasan Heydari, Eduardo Alchieri, Tobias Distler, and Alysson Bessani. Probabilistic byzantine fault tolerance. In Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC 2024, Nantes, France, June 17-21, 2024, pages 170-181. ACM, 2024. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3662158.3662810.
  6. Shehar Bano, Alberto Sonnino, Mustafa Al-Bassam, Sarah Azouvi, Patrick McCorry, Sarah Meiklejohn, and George Danezis. Sok: Consensus in the age of blockchains. In AFT, 2019. Google Scholar
  7. Michael Ben-Or. Another advantage of free choice: Completely asynchronous agreement protocols (extended abstract). In Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 17-19, 1983, pages 27-30. ACM, 1983. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/800221.806707.
  8. Gabriel Bracha and Sam Toueg. Asynchronous consensus and broadcast protocols. J. ACM, 32(4):824-840, 1985. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/4221.214134.
  9. Christian Cachin, Rachid Guerraoui, and Luís E. T. Rodrigues. Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming (2. ed.). Springer, 2011. URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15260-3.
  10. Christian Cachin, Klaus Kursawe, and Victor Shoup. Random oracles in constantipole: practical asynchronous byzantine agreement using cryptography (extended abstract). In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, July 16-19, 2000, Portland, Oregon, USA, pages 123-132. ACM, 2000. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/343477.343531.
  11. George Danezis, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, and Alexander Spiegelman. Narwhal and tusk: a dag-based mempool and efficient BFT consensus. In EuroSys '22: Seventeenth European Conference on Computer Systems, Rennes, France, April 5 - 8, 2022, pages 34-50. ACM, 2022. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3492321.3519594.
  12. Cynthia Dwork, Nancy Lynch, and Larry Stockmeyer. Consensus in the presence of partial synchrony. Journal of the ACM (JACM), 35(2):288-323, 1988. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/42282.42283.
  13. Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, and Mike Paterson. Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process. In Proceedings of the Second ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, March 21-23, 1983, pages 1-7. ACM, 1983. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/588058.588060.
  14. Eli Gafni. Round-by-round fault detectors: Unifying synchrony and asynchrony (extended abstract). In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, June 28 - July 2, 1998, pages 143-152. ACM, 1998. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/277697.277724.
  15. Giacomo Giuliari, Alberto Sonnino, Marc Frei, Fabio Streun, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, and Adrian Perrig. An Empirical Study of Consensus Protocols’ DoS Resilience. In ACM ASIACCS, 2024. Google Scholar
  16. Philipp Jovanovic, Lefteris Kokoris Kogias, Bryan Kumara, Alberto Sonnino, Pasindu Tennage, and Igor Zablotchi. Mahi-mahi: Low-latency asynchronous bft dag-based consensus. arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.08670, 2024. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.08670.
  17. Idit Keidar, Eleftherios Kokoris-Kogias, Oded Naor, and Alexander Spiegelman. All You Need is DAG. In ACM PODC, 2021. Google Scholar
  18. Leslie Lamport. The weak byzantine generals problem. J. ACM, 30(3):668-676, 1983. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2402.322398.
  19. Leslie Lamport, Robert E. Shostak, and Marshall C. Pease. The byzantine generals problem. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst., 4(3):382-401, 1982. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/357172.357176.
  20. Dahlia Malkhi, Michael K. Reiter, Avishai Wool, and Rebecca N. Wright. Probabilistic quorum systems. Inf. Comput., 170(2):184-206, 2001. URL: https://doi.org/10.1006/INCO.2001.3054.
  21. Henrique Moniz, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Miguel Correia, and Paulo Veríssimo. RITAS: services for randomized intrusion tolerance. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secur. Comput., 8(1):122-136, 2011. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2008.76.
  22. Achour Mostéfaoui, Hamouma Moumen, and Michel Raynal. Signature-free asynchronous binary byzantine consensus with t < n/3, o(n²) messages, and o(1) expected time. J. ACM, 62(4):31:1-31:21, 2015. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2785953.
  23. Michael O. Rabin. Randomized byzantine generals. In 24th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Tucson, Arizona, USA, 7-9 November 1983, pages 403-409. IEEE Computer Society, 1983. URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/SFCS.1983.48.
  24. Zhijie Ren, Kelong Cong, Johan Pouwelse, and Zekeriya Erkin. Implicit Consensus: Blockchain with Unbounded Throughput, 2017. URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.11046.
  25. Alexander Spiegelman, Neil Giridharan, Alberto Sonnino, and Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias. Bullshark: DAG BFT protocols made practical. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2022, Los Angeles, CA, USA, November 7-11, 2022, pages 2705-2718. ACM, 2022. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3548606.3559361.
  26. Jiong Yang, Gil Neiger, and Eli Gafni. Structured derivations of consensus algorithms for failure detectors. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC '98, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, June 28 - July 2, 1998, pages 297-306. ACM, 1998. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/277697.277755.
  27. Haifeng Yu. Signed quorum systems. Distributed Comput., 18(4):307-323, 2006. URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/S00446-005-0133-8.
  28. Haibin Zhang, Sisi Duan, Boxin Zhao, and Liehuang Zhu. Waterbear: Practical asynchronous BFT matching security guarantees of partially synchronous BFT. In 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, USENIX Security 2023, Anaheim, CA, USA, August 9-11, 2023, pages 5341-5357. USENIX Association, 2023. URL: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/zhang-haibin.
Any Issues?
X

Feedback on the Current Page

CAPTCHA

Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted to Dagstuhl Publishing

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2025 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH About DROPS Imprint Privacy Contact