13 Search Results for "Vukolić, Marko"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.6
Hierarchical Consensus: Scalability Through Optimism and Weak Liveness

Authors: Pedro Antonino, Antoine Durand, and A. W. Roscoe

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
Scalability is a central concern of Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) distributed protocols. The ubiquitous approach to work around the well-known Dolev-Reischuk Ω(n²) communication complexity lower bound is to use a random selection process to draw a hopefully small committee from a population of agents to run the communication-heavy protocol. We propose a notion of hierarchical consensus that combines two sub-protocols: an optimistic primary sub-protocol that can tolerate less than 1/2 failures and a fallback secondary protocol that can tolerate less than 1/3 failures; we achieve the higher failure threshold by requiring a weaker notion of liveness for the primary. This distinction between the level of fault tolerance between primary and secondary is reflected in the size of committees implementing these protocols. For a population of agents with close to 2/3 of honest agents, we need to select a committee with hundreds of agents to reach the level of tolerance expected for the primary, whereas we need thousands to reach the level expected for the secondary with a very small probability of error ε. Our hierarchical construct is such that if the primary comes to a decision, it can simply propagate it to the secondary protocol, so it does not need to properly engage in an agreement protocol independently. Our architecture is flexible and allows us to use our technique for most protocols that are based on random sampling. By studying hierarchical protocols, we discovered new theoretical results of independent interest. Specifically, the ability to handover from a primary protocol requires a new Justifiability property that allows agents to pre-decide on a value, such that if the protocol decides, it must be on that pre-decided value.
Cite as

Pedro Antonino, Antoine Durand, and A. W. Roscoe. Hierarchical Consensus: Scalability Through Optimism and Weak Liveness. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 6:1-6:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{antonino_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.6,
  author =	{Antonino, Pedro and Durand, Antoine and Roscoe, A. W.},
  title =	{{Hierarchical Consensus: Scalability Through Optimism and Weak Liveness}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{6:1--6:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.6},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248232},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.6},
  annote =	{Keywords: Hierarchical, Handover, Justifiability, Consensus, Distributed Systems, Blockchain}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.39
TEE Is Not a Healer: Rollback-Resistant Reliable Storage

Authors: Sadegh Keshavarzi, Gregory Chockler, and Alexey Gotsman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
Recent advances in secure hardware technologies, such as Intel SGX or ARM TrustZone, offer an opportunity to substantially reduce the costs of Byzantine fault-tolerance by placing the program code and state within a secure enclave known as a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). However, the protection offered by a TEE only applies during program execution. Once power is switched off, the non-volatile portion of the program state becomes vulnerable to rollback attacks wherein it is undetectably reverted to an older version. In this paper we consider the problem of implementing reliable read/write registers out of failure-prone replicas subject to state rollbacks. To this end, we introduce a new unified model that captures multiple failure types that can affect a TEE-based system and establish tight bounds on the fault-tolerance of register constructions in this model. We consider both the static case, where failure thresholds hold throughout the entire execution, and the dynamic case, where any number of replicas can roll back, provided these failures do not occur too often. Our dynamic register emulation algorithm, TEE-Rex , provides the first correct implementation of a distributed state recovery procedure that requires neither durable storage nor specialized hardware, such as trusted monotonic counters.
Cite as

Sadegh Keshavarzi, Gregory Chockler, and Alexey Gotsman. TEE Is Not a Healer: Rollback-Resistant Reliable Storage. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 39:1-39:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{keshavarzi_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.39,
  author =	{Keshavarzi, Sadegh and Chockler, Gregory and Gotsman, Alexey},
  title =	{{TEE Is Not a Healer: Rollback-Resistant Reliable Storage}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{39:1--39:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.39},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248560},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.39},
  annote =	{Keywords: Trusted execution environments, fault tolerance, crash recovery}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.42
Kudzu: Fast and Simple High-Throughput BFT

Authors: Victor Shoup, Jakub Sliwinski, and Yann Vonlanthen

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 356, 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)

Abstract
We present Kudzu, a high-throughput atomic broadcast protocol with an integrated fast path. Our contribution is based on the combination of two lines of work. Firstly, our protocol achieves finality in just two rounds of communication if all but p out of n = 3f + 2p + 1 participating replicas behave correctly, where f is the number of Byzantine faults that are tolerated. Due to the seamless integration of the fast path, even in the presence of more than p faults, our protocol maintains state-of-the-art characteristics. Secondly, our protocol utilizes the bandwidth of participating replicas in a balanced way, alleviating the bottleneck at the leader, and thus enabling high throughput. This is achieved by disseminating blocks using erasure codes. Despite combining a novel set of advantages, Kudzu is remarkably simple: intricacies such as "progress certificates", complex view changes, and speculative execution are avoided.
Cite as

Victor Shoup, Jakub Sliwinski, and Yann Vonlanthen. Kudzu: Fast and Simple High-Throughput BFT. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 42:1-42:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{shoup_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.42,
  author =	{Shoup, Victor and Sliwinski, Jakub and Vonlanthen, Yann},
  title =	{{Kudzu: Fast and Simple High-Throughput BFT}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{42:1--42:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-402-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{356},
  editor =	{Kowalski, Dariusz R.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.42},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248597},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.42},
  annote =	{Keywords: Consensus, Blockchain, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, Fast Path, State Machine Replication}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.16
Nakamoto Consensus from Multiple Resources

Authors: Mirza Ahad Baig, Christoph U. Günther, and Krzysztof Pietrzak

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 354, 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)

Abstract
The blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain "record" the amount of work W that went into creating them through proofs of work. When honest parties control a majority of the work, consensus is achieved by picking the chain with the highest recorded weight. Resources other than work have been considered to secure such longest-chain blockchains. In Chia, blocks record the amount of disk-space S (via a proof of space) and sequential computational steps V (through a VDF). In this paper, we ask what weight functions Γ(S,V,W) (that assign a weight to a block as a function of the recorded space, speed, and work) are secure in the sense that whenever the weight of the resources controlled by honest parties is larger than the weight of adversarial parties, the blockchain is secure against private double-spending attacks. We completely classify such functions in an idealized "continuous" model: Γ(S,V,W) is secure against private double-spending attacks if and only if it is homogeneous of degree one in the "timed" resources V and W, i.e., αΓ(S,V,W) = Γ(S,α V, α W). This includes the Bitcoin rule Γ(S,V,W) = W and the Chia rule Γ(S,V,W) = S ⋅ V. In a more realistic model where blocks are created at discrete time-points, one additionally needs some mild assumptions on the dependency on S (basically, the weight should not grow too much if S is slightly increased, say linear as in Chia). Our classification is more general and allows various instantiations of the same resource. It provides a powerful tool for designing new longest-chain blockchains. E.g., consider combining different PoWs to counter centralization, say the Bitcoin PoW W₁ and a memory-hard PoW W₂. Previous work suggested to use W₁+W₂ as weight. Our results show that using e.g., √{W₁}⋅ √{W₂} or min{W₁,W₂} are also secure, and we argue that in practice these are much better choices.
Cite as

Mirza Ahad Baig, Christoph U. Günther, and Krzysztof Pietrzak. Nakamoto Consensus from Multiple Resources. In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 354, pp. 16:1-16:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{baig_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2025.16,
  author =	{Baig, Mirza Ahad and G\"{u}nther, Christoph U. and Pietrzak, Krzysztof},
  title =	{{Nakamoto Consensus from Multiple Resources}},
  booktitle =	{7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2025)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-400-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{354},
  editor =	{Avarikioti, Zeta and Christin, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-247353},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Nakamoto Consensus, Heaviest-chain Rule, Resource Theory}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.7
Incentive Compatibility of Ethereum’s PoS Consensus Protocol

Authors: Ulysse Pavloff, Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou, and Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 324, 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)

Abstract
This paper investigates whether following the fork-choice rule in the Ethereum PoS consensus protocol constitutes a Nash equilibrium - i.e., whether the protocol that maintains the canonical chain in Ethereum is incentive-compatible. Specifically, we explore whether selfish participants may attempt to manipulate the fork-choice rule by forking out previous blocks and capturing the rewards associated with those blocks. Our analysis considers two strategies for participants: the obedient strategy, which adheres to the prescribed protocol, and the cunning strategy, which attempts to manipulate the fork-choice rule to gain more rewards. We evaluate the conditions under which selfish participants might deviate from the obedient strategy. We found that, in a synchronous system, following the prescribed fork-choice rule is incentive-compatible. However, in an eventually synchronous system, the protocol is eventually incentive-compatible - that is, only a limited number of proposers will find it profitable to fork the chain during the synchronous period. After this sequence of cunning proposers, subsequent proposers will find it more profitable to follow the protocol.
Cite as

Ulysse Pavloff, Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou, and Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni. Incentive Compatibility of Ethereum’s PoS Consensus Protocol. In 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 324, pp. 7:1-7:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{pavloff_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.7,
  author =	{Pavloff, Ulysse and Amoussou-Guenou, Yackolley and Tucci-Piergiovanni, Sara},
  title =	{{Incentive Compatibility of Ethereum’s PoS Consensus Protocol}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-360-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{324},
  editor =	{Bonomi, Silvia and Galletta, Letterio and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-225431},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Ethereum PoS, Game Theory, Block Reward}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.4
AMECOS: A Modular Event-Based Framework for Concurrent Object Specification

Authors: Timothé Albouy, Antonio Fernández Anta, Chryssis Georgiou, Mathieu Gestin, Nicolas Nicolaou, and Junlang Wang

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 324, 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)

Abstract
In this work, we introduce a modular framework for specifying distributed systems that we call AMECOS. Specifically, our framework departs from the traditional use of sequential specification, which presents limitations both on the specification expressiveness and implementation efficiency of inherently concurrent objects, as documented by Castañeda, Rajsbaum and Raynal in CACM 2023. Our framework focuses on the interactions between the various system components, specified as concurrent objects. Interactions are described with sequences of object events. This provides a modular way of specifying distributed systems and separates legality (object semantics) from other issues, such as consistency. We demonstrate the usability of our framework by (i) specifying various well-known concurrent objects, such as registers, shared memory, message-passing, reliable broadcast, and consensus, (ii) providing hierarchies of ordering semantics (namely, consistency hierarchy, memory hierarchy, and reliable broadcast hierarchy), and (iii) presenting a novel axiomatic proof of the impossibility of the well-known Consensus problem.
Cite as

Timothé Albouy, Antonio Fernández Anta, Chryssis Georgiou, Mathieu Gestin, Nicolas Nicolaou, and Junlang Wang. AMECOS: A Modular Event-Based Framework for Concurrent Object Specification. In 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 324, pp. 4:1-4:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{albouy_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.4,
  author =	{Albouy, Timoth\'{e} and Fern\'{a}ndez Anta, Antonio and Georgiou, Chryssis and Gestin, Mathieu and Nicolaou, Nicolas and Wang, Junlang},
  title =	{{AMECOS: A Modular Event-Based Framework for Concurrent Object Specification}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:29},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-360-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{324},
  editor =	{Bonomi, Silvia and Galletta, Letterio and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-225409},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Concurrency, Object specification, Consistency conditions, Consensus impossibility}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.20
How Robust Are Synchronous Consensus Protocols?

Authors: Nenad Milošević, Daniel Cason, Zarko Milošević, and Fernando Pedone

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 324, 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)

Abstract
Synchronous Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) protocols have long been a reality in an academic setting, yet their practicality remains debated. The main concern of skeptics of synchronous systems is that the correctness of these protocols depends on the timely delivery of all messages within a predefined synchronous bound, Δ. This dependency creates a challenging tradeoff between protocol correctness and performance, as Δ directly impacts both. In this paper, we examine this tradeoff in detail. Specifically, we introduce BoundBFT, a new synchronous BFT consensus protocol. We analyze how BoundBFT’s correctness can be compromised and use this analysis to design and implement the most effective attack strategies that malicious processes could employ. Furthermore, we experimentally determine the synchronous bound Δ that provides sufficient confidence in maintaining protocol correctness even in the presence of malicious replicas. Finally, we apply this discovered bound to BoundBFT, evaluate its performance, and compare it to state-of-the-art synchronous and partially synchronous protocols.
Cite as

Nenad Milošević, Daniel Cason, Zarko Milošević, and Fernando Pedone. How Robust Are Synchronous Consensus Protocols?. In 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 324, pp. 20:1-20:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{milosevic_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.20,
  author =	{Milo\v{s}evi\'{c}, Nenad and Cason, Daniel and Milo\v{s}evi\'{c}, Zarko and Pedone, Fernando},
  title =	{{How Robust Are Synchronous Consensus Protocols?}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-360-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{324},
  editor =	{Bonomi, Silvia and Galletta, Letterio and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-225560},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Synchronous Consensus, Byzantine Failures, Blockchain}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.31
Dynamic Probabilistic Reliable Broadcast

Authors: João Paulo Bezerra, Veronika Anikina, Petr Kuznetsov, Liron Schiff, and Stefan Schmid

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 324, 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)

Abstract
Byzantine reliable broadcast is a fundamental primitive in distributed systems that allows a set of processes to agree on a message broadcast by a dedicated process, even when some of them are malicious (Byzantine). It guarantees that no two correct processes deliver different messages, and if a message is delivered by a correct process, every correct process eventually delivers one. Byzantine reliable broadcast protocols are known to scale poorly, as they require Ω(n²) message exchanges, where n is the number of system members. The quadratic cost can be explained by the inherent need for every process to relay a message to every other process. In this paper, we explore ways to overcome this limitation by casting the problem to the probabilistic setting. We propose a solution in which every broadcast message is validated by a small set of witnesses, which allows us to maintain low latency and small communication complexity. In order to tolerate the slow adaptive adversary, we dynamically select the witnesses through a novel stream-local hash function: given a stream of inputs, it generates a stream of output hashed values that adapts to small deviations of the inputs. Our performance analysis shows that the proposed solution exhibits significant scalability gains over state-of-the-art protocols.
Cite as

João Paulo Bezerra, Veronika Anikina, Petr Kuznetsov, Liron Schiff, and Stefan Schmid. Dynamic Probabilistic Reliable Broadcast. In 28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 324, pp. 31:1-31:30, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{bezerra_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.31,
  author =	{Bezerra, Jo\~{a}o Paulo and Anikina, Veronika and Kuznetsov, Petr and Schiff, Liron and Schmid, Stefan},
  title =	{{Dynamic Probabilistic Reliable Broadcast}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2024)},
  pages =	{31:1--31:30},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-360-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{324},
  editor =	{Bonomi, Silvia and Galletta, Letterio and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.31},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-225679},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2024.31},
  annote =	{Keywords: Reliable broadcast, probabilistic algorithms, witness sets, stream-local hashing, cryptocurrencies, accountability}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.5
Security Analysis of Filecoin’s Expected Consensus in the Byzantine vs Honest Model

Authors: Xuechao Wang, Sarah Azouvi, and Marko Vukolić

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 282, 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023)

Abstract
Filecoin is the largest storage-based open-source blockchain, both by storage capacity (>11EiB) and market capitalization. This paper provides the first formal security analysis of Filecoin’s consensus (ordering) protocol, Expected Consensus (EC). Specifically, we show that EC is secure against an arbitrary adversary that controls a fraction β of the total storage for β m < 1- e^{-(1-β)m}, where m is a parameter that corresponds to the expected number of blocks per round, currently m = 5 in Filecoin. We then present an attack, the n-split attack, where an adversary splits the honest miners between multiple chains, and show that it is successful for β m ≥ 1- e^{-(1-β)m}, thus proving that β m = 1- e^{-(1-β)m} is the tight security threshold of EC. This corresponds roughly to an adversary with 20% of the total storage pledged to the chain. Finally, we propose two improvements to EC security that would increase this threshold. One of these two fixes is being implemented as a Filecoin Improvement Proposal (FIP).
Cite as

Xuechao Wang, Sarah Azouvi, and Marko Vukolić. Security Analysis of Filecoin’s Expected Consensus in the Byzantine vs Honest Model. In 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 282, pp. 5:1-5:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{wang_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2023.5,
  author =	{Wang, Xuechao and Azouvi, Sarah and Vukoli\'{c}, Marko},
  title =	{{Security Analysis of Filecoin’s Expected Consensus in the Byzantine vs Honest Model}},
  booktitle =	{5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-303-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{282},
  editor =	{Bonneau, Joseph and Weinberg, S. Matthew},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-191943},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Decentralized storage, Consensus, Security analysis}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.19
Modeling Resources in Permissionless Longest-Chain Total-Order Broadcast

Authors: Sarah Azouvi, Christian Cachin, Duc V. Le, Marko Vukolić, and Luca Zanolini

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 253, 26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022)

Abstract
Blockchain protocols implement total-order broadcast in a permissionless setting, where processes can freely join and leave. In such a setting, to safeguard against Sybil attacks, correct processes rely on cryptographic proofs tied to a particular type of resource to make them eligible to order transactions. For example, in the case of Proof-of-Work (PoW), this resource is computation, and the proof is a solution to a computationally hard puzzle. Conversely, in Proof-of-Stake (PoS), the resource corresponds to the number of coins that every process in the system owns, and a secure lottery selects a process for participation proportionally to its coin holdings. Although many resource-based blockchain protocols are formally proven secure in the literature, the existing security proofs fail to demonstrate why particular types of resources cause the blockchain protocols to be vulnerable to distinct classes of attacks. For instance, PoS systems are more vulnerable to long-range attacks, where an adversary corrupts past processes to re-write the history, than PoW and Proof-of-Storage systems. Proof-of-Storage-based and PoS-based protocols are both more susceptible to private double-spending attacks than PoW-based protocols; in this case, an adversary mines its chain in secret without sharing its blocks with the rest of the processes until the end of the attack. In this paper, we formally characterize the properties of resources through an abstraction called resource allocator and give a framework for understanding longest-chain consensus protocols based on different underlying resources. In addition, we use this resource allocator to demonstrate security trade-offs between various resources focusing on well-known attacks (e.g., the long-range attack and nothing-at-stake attacks).
Cite as

Sarah Azouvi, Christian Cachin, Duc V. Le, Marko Vukolić, and Luca Zanolini. Modeling Resources in Permissionless Longest-Chain Total-Order Broadcast. In 26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 253, pp. 19:1-19:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{azouvi_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.19,
  author =	{Azouvi, Sarah and Cachin, Christian and Le, Duc V. and Vukoli\'{c}, Marko and Zanolini, Luca},
  title =	{{Modeling Resources in Permissionless Longest-Chain Total-Order Broadcast}},
  booktitle =	{26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022)},
  pages =	{19:1--19:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-265-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{253},
  editor =	{Hillel, Eshcar and Palmieri, Roberto and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.19},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-176398},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.19},
  annote =	{Keywords: blockchain, consensus, resource, broadcast}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.7
Asymmetric Distributed Trust

Authors: Christian Cachin and Björn Tackmann

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 153, 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2019)

Abstract
Quorum systems are a key abstraction in distributed fault-tolerant computing for capturing trust assumptions. They can be found at the core of many algorithms for implementing reliable broadcasts, shared memory, consensus and other problems. This paper introduces asymmetric Byzantine quorum systems that model subjective trust. Every process is free to choose which combinations of other processes it trusts and which ones it considers faulty. Asymmetric quorum systems strictly generalize standard Byzantine quorum systems, which have only one global trust assumption for all processes. This work also presents protocols that implement abstractions of shared memory and broadcast primitives with processes prone to Byzantine faults and asymmetric trust. The model and protocols pave the way for realizing more elaborate algorithms with asymmetric trust.
Cite as

Christian Cachin and Björn Tackmann. Asymmetric Distributed Trust. In 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 153, pp. 7:1-7:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{cachin_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.7,
  author =	{Cachin, Christian and Tackmann, Bj\"{o}rn},
  title =	{{Asymmetric Distributed Trust}},
  booktitle =	{23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2019)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-133-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{153},
  editor =	{Felber, Pascal and Friedman, Roy and Gilbert, Seth and Miller, Avery},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-117933},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Quorums, consensus, distributed trust, blockchains, cryptocurrencies}
}
Document
Keynote Talk
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.1
Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild (Keynote Talk)

Authors: Christian Cachin and Marko Vukolic

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 91, 31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017)

Abstract
A blockchain is a distributed ledger for recording transactions, maintained by many nodes without central authority through a distributed cryptographic protocol. All nodes validate the information to be appended to the blockchain, and a consensus protocol ensures that the nodes agree on a unique order in which entries are appended. Consensus protocols for tolerating Byzantine faults have received renewed attention because they also address blockchain systems. This work discusses the process of assessing and gaining confidence in the resilience of a consensus protocols exposed to faults and adversarial nodes. We advocate to follow the established practice in cryptography and computer security, relying on public reviews, detailed models, and formal proofs; the designers of several practical systems appear to be unaware of this. Moreover, we review the consensus protocols in some prominent permissioned blockchain platforms with respect to their fault models and resilience against attacks.
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Christian Cachin and Marko Vukolic. Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild (Keynote Talk). In 31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 91, pp. 1:1-1:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{cachin_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2017.1,
  author =	{Cachin, Christian and Vukolic, Marko},
  title =	{{Blockchain Consensus Protocols in the Wild}},
  booktitle =	{31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-053-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{91},
  editor =	{Richa, Andr\'{e}a},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-80160},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Permissioned blockchains, consensus, Byzantine fault-tolerance, snake oil, protocol analysis}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.24
Non-Determinism in Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Replication

Authors: Christian Cachin, Simon Schubert, and Marko Vukolic

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 70, 20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016)

Abstract
Service replication distributes an application over many processes for tolerating faults, attacks, and misbehavior among a subset of the processes. With the recent interest in blockchain technologies, distributed execution of one logical application has become a prominent topic. The established state-machine replication paradigm inherently requires the application to be deterministic. This paper distinguishes three models for dealing with non-determinism in replicated services, where some processes are subject to faults and arbitrary behavior (so-called Byzantine faults): first, the modular case that does not require any changes to the potentially non-deterministic application (and neither access to its internal data); second, master-slave solutions, where ties are broken by a leader and the other processes validate the choices of the leader; and finally, applications that use cryptography and secret keys. Cryptographic operations and secrets must be treated specially because they require strong randomness to satisfy their goals. The paper also introduces two new protocols. First, Protocol Sieve uses the modular approach and filters out non-deterministic operations in an application. It ensures that all correct processes produce the same outputs and that their internal states do not diverge. A second protocol, called Mastercrypt, implements cryptographically secure randomness generation with a verifiable random function and is appropriate for most situations in which cryptographic secrets are involved. All protocols are described in a generic way and do not assume a particular implementation of the underlying consensus primitive.
Cite as

Christian Cachin, Simon Schubert, and Marko Vukolic. Non-Determinism in Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Replication. In 20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 70, pp. 24:1-24:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{cachin_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.24,
  author =	{Cachin, Christian and Schubert, Simon and Vukolic, Marko},
  title =	{{Non-Determinism in Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Replication}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016)},
  pages =	{24:1--24:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-031-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{70},
  editor =	{Fatourou, Panagiota and Jim\'{e}nez, Ernesto and Pedone, Fernando},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.24},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-70935},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.24},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, atomic broadcast, consensus, distributed cryptography, verifiable random functions}
}
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