On Time-Optimal, Fault-Tolerant Algorithms for Connected Consensus Beyond Grade Two

Abstract

A common question in the asynchronous model is whether some given notion of agreement between processes is achievable. Usually, we formalise such agreement notions in the form of agreement problems. Some of these problems also receive the name of coordination primitives. Several fault-tolerant algorithms in asynchronous systems rely upon the use of different primitives as building blocks, such as adopt-commit, crusader agreement, or graded broadcast.
Recently, the connected consensus problem - a form of agreement over a specific family of graphs parametrised by a positive integer R- was introduced. This problem unifies the three mentioned primitives while extending them for multi-valued inputs. Moreover, the problem is equipped with a security condition called binding, which limits the effect of malicious processes over the decision of correct parties. While fault-tolerant connected consensus algorithms for R = 1 and R = 2 are known, the existence of algorithmic solutions for any positive integer parameter remained an open question.
In this work, we introduce a pair of fault-tolerant algorithms for connected consensus when the R parameter is any positive integer. We introduce a crash-resilient algorithm, which is optimal with respect to the maximum number of possible faulty processes. Our second algorithm is resilient to Byzantine failures; whose failure-resilience is optimal for a specific class of algorithms. Both algorithms satisfy the binding property and match the best known time complexities achieved for the R = 1 and R = 2 cases, further achieving time optimality for the general case in the crash-failure setting, and asymptotic time optimality in the Byzantine scenario.