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Documents authored by Ford, Bryan

Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.3
Limix: Limiting Lamport Exposure to Distant Failures in Globally-Managed Distributed Systems

Authors: Cristina Băsescu, Georgia Fragkouli, Enis Ceyhun Alp, Michael F. Nowlan, Jose M. Faleiro, Gaylor Bosson, Kelong Cong, Pierluca Borsò-Tan, Vero Estrada-Galiñanes, and Bryan Ford

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 139, 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)

Abstract
Globalized computing infrastructures offer the convenience and elasticity of globally managed objects and services, but lack the resilience to distant failures that localized infrastructures such as private clouds provide. Providing both global management and resilience to distant failures, however, poses a fundamental problem for configuration services: How to discover a possibly migratory, strongly-consistent service/object in a globalized infrastructure without dependencies on globalized state? Limix is the first metadata configuration service that addresses this problem. With Limix, global strongly-consistent data-plane services and objects are insulated from remote gray failures by ensuring that the definitive, strongly-consistent metadata for any object is always confined to the same region as the object itself. Limix guarantees availability bounds: any user can continue accessing any strongly consistent object that matters to the user located at distance Δ away, insulated from failures outside a small multiple of Δ. We built a Limix metadata service based on the key-value interface of CockroachDB. Our experiments on Internet-like networks and on AWS, using realistic trace-driven workloads, show that Limix enables global management and significantly improves availability over the state-of-the-art.
Cite as

Cristina Băsescu, Georgia Fragkouli, Enis Ceyhun Alp, Michael F. Nowlan, Jose M. Faleiro, Gaylor Bosson, Kelong Cong, Pierluca Borsò-Tan, Vero Estrada-Galiñanes, and Bryan Ford. Limix: Limiting Lamport Exposure to Distant Failures in Globally-Managed Distributed Systems. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 3:1-3:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{basescu_et_al:OASIcs.NINeS.2026.3,
  author =	{B\u{a}sescu, Cristina and Fragkouli, Georgia and Alp, Enis Ceyhun and Nowlan, Michael F. and Faleiro, Jose M. and Bosson, Gaylor and Cong, Kelong and Bors\`{o}-Tan, Pierluca and Estrada-Gali\~{n}anes, Vero and Ford, Bryan},
  title =	{{Limix: Limiting Lamport Exposure to Distant Failures in Globally-Managed Distributed Systems}},
  booktitle =	{1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:29},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-414-7},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{139},
  editor =	{Argyraki, Katerina and Panda, Aurojit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255880},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Distributed systems, Availability, Fault tolerance, Strong-consistency, Coordination systems, Lamport exposure}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.3
F3B: A Low-Overhead Blockchain Architecture with Per-Transaction Front-Running Protection

Authors: Haoqian Zhang, Louis-Henri Merino, Ziyan Qu, Mahsa Bastankhah, Vero Estrada-Galiñanes, and Bryan Ford

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

Abstract
Front-running attacks, which benefit from advanced knowledge of pending transactions, have proliferated in the blockchain space since the emergence of decentralized finance. Front-running causes devastating losses to honest participants and continues to endanger the fairness of the ecosystem. We present Flash Freezing Flash Boys (F3B), a blockchain architecture that addresses front-running attacks by using threshold cryptography. In F3B, a user generates a symmetric key to encrypt their transaction, and once the underlying consensus layer has finalized the transaction, a decentralized secret-management committee reveals this key. F3B mitigates front-running attacks because, before the consensus group finalizes it, an adversary can no longer read the content of a transaction, thus preventing the adversary from benefiting from advanced knowledge of pending transactions. Unlike other mitigation systems, F3B properly ensures that all unfinalized transactions, even with significant delays, remain private by adopting per-transaction protection. Furthermore, F3B addresses front-running at the execution layer; thus, our solution is agnostic to the underlying consensus algorithm and compatible with existing smart contracts. We evaluated F3B on Ethereum with a modified execution layer and found only a negligible (0.026%) increase in transaction latency, specifically due to running threshold decryption with a 128-member secret-management committee after a transaction is finalized; this indicates that F3B is both practical and low-cost.
Cite as

Haoqian Zhang, Louis-Henri Merino, Ziyan Qu, Mahsa Bastankhah, Vero Estrada-Galiñanes, and Bryan Ford. F3B: A Low-Overhead Blockchain Architecture with Per-Transaction Front-Running Protection. In 5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 282, pp. 3:1-3:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{zhang_et_al:LIPIcs.AFT.2023.3,
  author =	{Zhang, Haoqian and Merino, Louis-Henri and Qu, Ziyan and Bastankhah, Mahsa and Estrada-Gali\~{n}anes, Vero and Ford, Bryan},
  title =	{{F3B: A Low-Overhead Blockchain Architecture with Per-Transaction Front-Running Protection}},
  booktitle =	{5th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT 2023)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:23},
  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.2023.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-191921},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2023.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, DeFi, Front-running Mitigation}
}
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