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Documents authored by Spiegelman, Alexander

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.18
Make Every Word Count: Adaptive Byzantine Agreement with Fewer Words

Authors: Shir Cohen, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman

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

Abstract
Byzantine Agreement (BA) is a key component in many distributed systems. While Dolev and Reischuk have proven a long time ago that quadratic communication complexity is necessary for worst-case runs, the question of what can be done in practically common runs with fewer failures remained open. In this paper we present the first Byzantine Broadcast algorithm with O(n(f+1)) communication complexity in a model with resilience of n = 2t+1, where 0 ≤ f ≤ t is the actual number of process failures in a run. And for BA with strong unanimity, we present the first optimal-resilience algorithm that has linear communication complexity in the failure-free case and a quadratic cost otherwise.
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Shir Cohen, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman. Make Every Word Count: Adaptive Byzantine Agreement with Fewer Words. In 26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 253, pp. 18:1-18:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{cohen_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.18,
  author =	{Cohen, Shir and Keidar, Idit and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Make Every Word Count: Adaptive Byzantine Agreement with Fewer Words}},
  booktitle =	{26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022)},
  pages =	{18:1--18:21},
  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-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.18},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-176385},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.18},
  annote =	{Keywords: Byzantine Agreement, Byzantine Broadcast, Adaptive communication}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.3
Tuning PoW with Hybrid Expenditure

Authors: Itay Tsabary, Alexander Spiegelman, and Ittay Eyal

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 97, 3rd International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics 2021)

Abstract
Proof of Work (PoW) is a Sybil-deterrence security mechanism. It introduces an external cost to system participation by requiring computational effort to perform actions. However, since its inception, a central challenge was to tune this cost. Initial designs for deterring spam email and DoS attacks applied overhead equally to honest participants and attackers. Requiring too little effort does not deter attacks, whereas too much encumbers honest participation. This might be the reason it was never widely adopted. Nakamoto overcame this trade-off in Bitcoin by distinguishing desired from malicious behavior and introducing internal rewards for the former. This mechanism gained popularity in securing permissionless cryptocurrencies, using virtual internally-minted tokens for rewards. However, in existing blockchain protocols the internal rewards directly compensate users for (almost) the same value of external expenses. Thus, as the token value soars, so does the PoW expenditure. Bitcoin PoW, for example, already expends as much electricity as Colombia or Switzerland. This amount of resource-guzzling is unsustainable, and hinders even wider adoption of these systems. As such, a prominent alternative named Proof of Stake (PoS) replaces the expenditure requirement with token possession. However, PoS is shun by many cryptocurrency projects, as it is only secure under qualitatively-different assumptions, and the resultant systems are not permissionless. In this work we present Hybrid Expenditure Blockchain (HEB), a novel PoW mechanism. HEB is a generalization of Nakamoto’s protocol that enables tuning the external expenditure by introducing a complementary internal-expenditure mechanism. Thus, for the first time, HEB decouples external expenditure from the reward value. We show a practical parameter choice by which HEB requires significantly less external consumption compare to Nakamoto’s protocol, its resilience against rational attackers is similar, and it retains the decentralized and permissionless nature of the system. Taking the Bitcoin ecosystem as an example, HEB cuts the electricity consumption by half.
Cite as

Itay Tsabary, Alexander Spiegelman, and Ittay Eyal. Tuning PoW with Hybrid Expenditure. In 3rd International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics 2021). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 97, pp. 3:1-3:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{tsabary_et_al:OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.3,
  author =	{Tsabary, Itay and Spiegelman, Alexander and Eyal, Ittay},
  title =	{{Tuning PoW with Hybrid Expenditure}},
  booktitle =	{3rd International Conference on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols (Tokenomics 2021)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:17},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-220-4},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{97},
  editor =	{Gramoli, Vincent and Halaburda, Hanna and Pass, Rafael},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-159008},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Tokenomics.2021.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, Proof of work, Cryptocurrency, Environmental impact}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.30
Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries

Authors: Gal Assa, Hagar Meir, Guy Golan-Gueta, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 217, 25th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2021)

Abstract
Transactional data structure libraries (TDSL) combine the ease-of-programming of transactions with the high performance and scalability of custom-tailored concurrent data structures. They can be very efficient thanks to their ability to exploit data structure semantics in order to reduce overhead, aborts, and wasted work compared to general-purpose software transactional memory. However, TDSLs were not previously used for complex use-cases involving long transactions and a variety of data structures. In this paper, we boost the performance and usability of a TDSL, towards allowing it to support complex applications. A key idea is nesting. Nested transactions create checkpoints within a longer transaction, so as to limit the scope of abort, without changing the semantics of the original transaction. We build a Java TDSL with built-in support for nested transactions over a number of data structures. We conduct a case study of a complex network intrusion detection system that invests a significant amount of work to process each packet. Our study shows that our library outperforms publicly available STMs twofold without nesting, and by up to 16x when nesting is used.
Cite as

Gal Assa, Hagar Meir, Guy Golan-Gueta, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman. Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries. In 25th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 217, pp. 30:1-30:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{assa_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.30,
  author =	{Assa, Gal and Meir, Hagar and Golan-Gueta, Guy and Keidar, Idit and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries}},
  booktitle =	{25th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2021)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-219-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{217},
  editor =	{Bramas, Quentin and Gramoli, Vincent and Milani, Alessia},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-158058},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2021.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: Transactional Libraries, Nesting}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.38
In Search for an Optimal Authenticated Byzantine Agreement

Authors: Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 209, 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)

Abstract
In this paper, we challenge the conventional approach of state machine replication systems to design deterministic agreement protocols in the eventually synchronous communication model. We first prove that no such protocol can guarantee bounded communication cost before the global stabilization time and propose a different approach that hopes for the best (synchrony) but prepares for the worst (asynchrony). Accordingly, we design an optimistic byzantine agreement protocol that first tries an efficient deterministic algorithm that relies on synchrony for termination only, and then, only if an agreement was not reached due to asynchrony, the protocol uses a randomized asynchronous protocol for fallback that guarantees termination with probability 1. We formally prove that our protocol achieves optimal communication complexity under all network conditions and failure scenarios. We first prove a lower bound of Ω(ft+ t) for synchronous deterministic byzantine agreement protocols, where t is the failure threshold, and f is the actual number of failures. Then, we present a tight upper bound and use it for the synchronous part of the optimistic protocol. Finally, for the asynchronous fallback, we use a variant of the (optimal) VABA protocol, which we reconstruct to safely combine it with the synchronous part. We believe that our adaptive to failures synchronous byzantine agreement protocol has an independent interest since it is the first protocol we are aware of which communication complexity optimally depends on the actual number of failures.
Cite as

Alexander Spiegelman. In Search for an Optimal Authenticated Byzantine Agreement. In 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 209, pp. 38:1-38:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{spiegelman:LIPIcs.DISC.2021.38,
  author =	{Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{In Search for an Optimal Authenticated Byzantine Agreement}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)},
  pages =	{38:1--38:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-210-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{209},
  editor =	{Gilbert, Seth},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.38},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-148401},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.38},
  annote =	{Keywords: Byzantine agreement, Optimistic, Asynchronous fallback}
}
Document
Brief Announcement
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.45
Brief Announcement: Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries

Authors: Gal Assa, Hagar Meir, Guy Golan-Gueta, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 209, 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)

Abstract
Transactional data structure libraries (TDSL) combine the ease-of-programming of transactions with the high performance and scalability of custom-tailored concurrent data structures. They can be very efficient thanks to their ability to exploit data structure semantics in order to reduce overhead, aborts, and wasted work compared to general-purpose software transactional memory. However, TDSLs were not previously used for complex use-cases involving long transactions and a variety of data structures. In this paper, we boost the performance and usability of a TDSL, towards allowing it to support complex applications. A key idea is nesting. Nested transactions create checkpoints within a longer transaction, so as to limit the scope of abort, without changing the semantics of the original transaction. We build a Java TDSL with built-in support for nested transactions over a number of data structures. We conduct a case study of a complex network intrusion detection system that invests a significant amount of work to process each packet. Our study shows that our library outperforms publicly available STMs twofold without nesting, and by up to 16x when nesting is used.
Cite as

Gal Assa, Hagar Meir, Guy Golan-Gueta, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman. Brief Announcement: Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries. In 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 209, pp. 45:1-45:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{assa_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2021.45,
  author =	{Assa, Gal and Meir, Hagar and Golan-Gueta, Guy and Keidar, Idit and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Brief Announcement: Using Nesting to Push the Limits of Transactional Data Structure Libraries}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)},
  pages =	{45:1--45:4},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-210-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{209},
  editor =	{Gilbert, Seth},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.45},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-148479},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.45},
  annote =	{Keywords: Transactional Libraries}
}
Document
Brief Announcement
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.57
Brief Announcement: Probabilistic Indistinguishability and The Quality of Validity in Byzantine Agreement

Authors: Guy Goren, Yoram Moses, and Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 209, 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)

Abstract
Lower bounds and impossibility results in distributed computing are both intellectually challenging and practically important. Hundreds if not thousands of proofs appear in the literature, but surprisingly, the vast majority of them apply to deterministic algorithms only. Probabilistic protocols have been around for at least four decades and are receiving a lot of attention with the emergence of blockchain systems. Nonetheless, we are aware of only a handful of randomized lower bounds. In this work we provide a formal framework for reasoning about randomized distributed algorithms. We generalize the notion of indistinguishability, the most useful tool in deterministic lower bounds, to apply to a probabilistic setting. We apply this framework to prove a result of independent interest. Namely, we completely characterize the quality of decisions that protocols for a randomized multi-valued Consensus problem can guarantee in an asynchronous environment with Byzantine faults. We use the new notion to prove a lower bound on the guaranteed probability that honest parties will not decide on a possibly bogus value proposed by a malicious party. Finally, we show that the bound is tight by providing a protocol that matches it. This brief announcement consists of an introduction to the full paper [Guy Goren et al., 2020] by the same title. The interested reader is advised to consult the full paper for a detailed exposition.
Cite as

Guy Goren, Yoram Moses, and Alexander Spiegelman. Brief Announcement: Probabilistic Indistinguishability and The Quality of Validity in Byzantine Agreement. In 35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 209, pp. 57:1-57:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{goren_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2021.57,
  author =	{Goren, Guy and Moses, Yoram and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Brief Announcement: Probabilistic Indistinguishability and The Quality of Validity in Byzantine Agreement}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2021)},
  pages =	{57:1--57:4},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-210-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{209},
  editor =	{Gilbert, Seth},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.57},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-148596},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2021.57},
  annote =	{Keywords: Indistinguishability, probabilistic lower bounds, Byzantine agreement}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2020.9
ACE: Abstract Consensus Encapsulation for Liveness Boosting of State Machine Replication

Authors: Alexander Spiegelman, Arik Rinberg, and Dahlia Malkhi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 184, 24th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2020)

Abstract
With the emergence of attack-prone cross-organization systems, providing asynchronous state machine replication (SMR) solutions is no longer a theoretical concern. This paper presents ACE, a framework for the design of such fault tolerant systems. Leveraging a known paradigm for randomized consensus solutions, ACE wraps existing practical solutions and real-life systems, boosting their liveness under adversarial conditions and, at the same time, promoting load balancing and fairness. Boosting is achieved without modifying the overall design or the engineering of these solutions. ACE is aimed at boosting the prevailing approach for practical fault tolerance. This approach, often named partial synchrony, is based on a leader-based paradigm: a good leader makes progress and a bad leader does no harm. The partial synchrony approach focuses on safety and forgoes liveness under targeted and dynamic attacks. Specifically, an attacker might block specific leaders, e.g., through a denial of service, to prevent progress. ACE provides boosting by running waves of parallel leaders and selecting a winning leader only retroactively, achieving boosting at a linear communication cost increase. ACE is agnostic to the fault model, inheriting it s failure model from the wrapped solution assumptions. As our evaluation shows, an asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) replication system built with ACE around an existing partially synchronous BFT protocol demonstrates reasonable slow-down compared with the base BFT protocol during faultless synchronous scenarios, yet exhibits significant speedup while the system is under attack.
Cite as

Alexander Spiegelman, Arik Rinberg, and Dahlia Malkhi. ACE: Abstract Consensus Encapsulation for Liveness Boosting of State Machine Replication. In 24th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 184, pp. 9:1-9:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{spiegelman_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2020.9,
  author =	{Spiegelman, Alexander and Rinberg, Arik and Malkhi, Dahlia},
  title =	{{ACE: Abstract Consensus Encapsulation for Liveness Boosting of State Machine Replication}},
  booktitle =	{24th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2020)},
  pages =	{9:1--9:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-176-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{184},
  editor =	{Bramas, Quentin and Oshman, Rotem and Romano, Paolo},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2020.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-134948},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2020.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: Framework, Asynchronous, Consensus boosting, State Machine Replication}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2020.25
Not a COINcidence: Sub-Quadratic Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement WHP

Authors: Shir Cohen, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 179, 34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2020)

Abstract
King and Saia were the first to break the quadratic word complexity bound for Byzantine Agreement in synchronous systems against an adaptive adversary, and Algorand broke this bound with near-optimal resilience (first in the synchronous model and then with eventual-synchrony). Yet the question of asynchronous sub-quadratic Byzantine Agreement remained open. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to answer this question in the affirmative. A key component of our solution is a shared coin algorithm based on a VRF. A second essential ingredient is VRF-based committee sampling, which we formalize and utilize in the asynchronous model for the first time. Our algorithms work against a delayed-adaptive adversary, which cannot perform after-the-fact removals but has full control of Byzantine processes and full information about communication in earlier rounds. Using committee sampling and our shared coin, we solve Byzantine Agreement with high probability, with a word complexity of Õ(n) and O(1) expected time, breaking the O(n²) bit barrier for asynchronous Byzantine Agreement.
Cite as

Shir Cohen, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman. Not a COINcidence: Sub-Quadratic Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement WHP. In 34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 179, pp. 25:1-25:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{cohen_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2020.25,
  author =	{Cohen, Shir and Keidar, Idit and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Not a COINcidence: Sub-Quadratic Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement WHP}},
  booktitle =	{34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2020)},
  pages =	{25:1--25:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-168-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{179},
  editor =	{Attiya, Hagit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2020.25},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-131034},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2020.25},
  annote =	{Keywords: shared coin, Byzantine Agreement, VRF, sub-quadratic consensus protocol}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.4
FairLedger: A Fair Blockchain Protocol for Financial Institutions

Authors: Kfir Lev-Ari, Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi

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

Abstract
Financial institutions nowadays are looking into technologies for permissioned blockchains. A major effort in this direction is Hyperledger, an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation and backed by a consortium of over a hundred companies. A key component in permissioned blockchain protocols is a byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) consensus engine that orders transactions. However, currently available BFT solutions in Hyperledger (as well as in the literature at large) are inadequate for financial settings; they are not designed to ensure fairness or to tolerate the selfish behavior that inevitably arises when financial institutions strive to maximize their own profit. We present FairLedger, a permissioned BFT blockchain protocol, which is fair, deigned to deal with rational behavior, and, no less important, easy to understand and implement. Our secret sauce is a new communication abstraction called detectable all-to-all (DA2A), which allows us to detect players (byzantine or rational) that deviate from the protocol and punish them. We implement FairLedger in the Hyperledger open source project using the Iroha framework - one of the biggest projects therein. To evaluate FairLegder’s performance, we also implement it in the PBFT framework and compare the two protocols. Our results show that in failure-free scenarios in wide-area settings, FairLedger achieves better throughput than both Iroha’s implementation and PBFT.
Cite as

Kfir Lev-Ari, Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi. FairLedger: A Fair Blockchain Protocol for Financial Institutions. In 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 153, pp. 4:1-4:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{levari_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.4,
  author =	{Lev-Ari, Kfir and Spiegelman, Alexander and Keidar, Idit and Malkhi, Dahlia},
  title =	{{FairLedger: A Fair Blockchain Protocol for Financial Institutions}},
  booktitle =	{23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2019)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:17},
  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-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-117904},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Blockchain, Fairness, Byzantine fault tolerance, Rational players, Equilibrium}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2018.11
Integrated Bounds for Disintegrated Storage

Authors: Alon Berger, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 121, 32nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2018)

Abstract
We point out a somewhat surprising similarity between non-authenticated Byzantine storage, coded storage, and certain emulations of shared registers from smaller ones. A common characteristic in all of these is the inability of reads to safely return a value obtained in a single atomic access to shared storage. We collectively refer to such systems as disintegrated storage, and show integrated space lower bounds for asynchronous regular wait-free emulations in all of them. In a nutshell, if readers are invisible, then the storage cost of such systems is inherently exponential in the size of written values; otherwise, it is at least linear in the number of readers. Our bounds are asymptotically tight to known algorithms, and thus justify their high costs.
Cite as

Alon Berger, Idit Keidar, and Alexander Spiegelman. Integrated Bounds for Disintegrated Storage. In 32nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 121, pp. 11:1-11:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

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@InProceedings{berger_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2018.11,
  author =	{Berger, Alon and Keidar, Idit and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Integrated Bounds for Disintegrated Storage}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2018)},
  pages =	{11:1--11:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-092-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{121},
  editor =	{Schmid, Ulrich and Widder, Josef},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2018.11},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-98009},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2018.11},
  annote =	{Keywords: storage, coding, lower bounds, space complexity, register emulations}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.25
Solida: A Blockchain Protocol Based on Reconfigurable Byzantine Consensus

Authors: Ittai Abraham, Dahlia Malkhi, Kartik Nayak, Ling Ren, and Alexander Spiegelman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 95, 21st International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2017)

Abstract
The decentralized cryptocurrency Bitcoin has experienced great success but also encountered many challenges. One of the challenges has been the long confirmation time. Another chal- lenge is the lack of incentives at certain steps of the protocol, raising concerns for transaction withholding, selfish mining, etc. To address these challenges, we propose Solida, a decentralized blockchain protocol based on reconfigurable Byzantine consensus augmented by proof-of-work. Solida improves on Bitcoin in confirmation time, and provides safety and liveness assuming the adversary control less than (roughly) one-third of the total mining power.
Cite as

Ittai Abraham, Dahlia Malkhi, Kartik Nayak, Ling Ren, and Alexander Spiegelman. Solida: A Blockchain Protocol Based on Reconfigurable Byzantine Consensus. In 21st International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 95, pp. 25:1-25:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018)

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@InProceedings{abraham_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.25,
  author =	{Abraham, Ittai and Malkhi, Dahlia and Nayak, Kartik and Ren, Ling and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Solida: A Blockchain Protocol Based on Reconfigurable Byzantine Consensus}},
  booktitle =	{21st International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2017)},
  pages =	{25:1--25:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-061-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2018},
  volume =	{95},
  editor =	{Aspnes, James and Bessani, Alysson and Felber, Pascal and Leit\~{a}o, Jo\~{a}o},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.25},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-86409},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2017.25},
  annote =	{Keywords: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Byzantine fault tolerance, Reconfiguration}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.40
Dynamic Reconfiguration: Abstraction and Optimal Asynchronous Solution

Authors: Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi

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

Abstract
Providing clean and efficient foundations and tools for reconfiguration is a crucial enabler for distributed system management today. This work takes a step towards developing such foundations. It considers classic fault-tolerant atomic objects emulated on top of a static set of fault-prone servers, and turns them into dynamic ones. The specification of a dynamic object extends the corresponding static (non-dynamic) one with an API for changing the underlying set of fault-prone servers. Thus, in a dynamic model, an object can start in some configuration and continue in a different one. Its liveness is preserved through the reconfigurations it undergoes, tolerating a versatile set of faults as it shifts from one configuration to another. In this paper we present a general abstraction for asynchronous reconfiguration, and exemplify its usefulness for building two dynamic objects: a read/write register and a max-register. We first define a dynamic model with a clean failure condition that allows an administrator to reconfigure the system and switch off a server once the reconfiguration operation removing it completes. We then define the Reconfiguration abstraction and show how it can be used to build dynamic registers and max-registers. Finally, we give an optimal asynchronous algorithm implementing the Reconfiguration abstraction, which in turn leads to the first asynchronous (consensus-free) dynamic register emulation with optimal complexity. More concretely, faced with n requests for configuration changes, the number of configurations that the dynamic register is implemented over is n; and the complexity of each client operation is O(n).
Cite as

Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi. Dynamic Reconfiguration: Abstraction and Optimal Asynchronous Solution. In 31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 91, pp. 40:1-40:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{spiegelman_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2017.40,
  author =	{Spiegelman, Alexander and Keidar, Idit and Malkhi, Dahlia},
  title =	{{Dynamic Reconfiguration: Abstraction and Optimal Asynchronous Solution}},
  booktitle =	{31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017)},
  pages =	{40:1--40:15},
  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-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.40},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-79673},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.40},
  annote =	{Keywords: Reconfiguration, Dynamic Objects, Optimal Algorithm}
}
Document
Brief Announcement
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.53
Brief Announcement: Towards Reduced Instruction Sets for Synchronization

Authors: Rati Gelashvili, Idit Keidar, Alexander Spiegelman, and Roger Wattenhofer

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

Abstract
Contrary to common belief, a recent work by Ellen, Gelashvili, Shavit, and Zhu has shown that computability does not require multicore architectures to support "strong" synchronization instructions like compare-and-swap, as opposed to combinations of "weaker" instructions like decrement and multiply. However, this is the status quo, and in turn, most efficient concurrent data-structures heavily rely on compare-and-swap (e.g. for swinging pointers). We show that this need not be the case, by designing and implementing a concurrent linearizable Log data-structure (also known as a History object), supporting two operations: append(item), which appends the item to the log, and get-log(), which returns the appended items so far, in order. Readers are wait-free and writers are lock-free, hence this data-structure can be used in a lock-free universal construction to implement any concurrent object with a given sequential specification. Our implementation uses atomic read, xor, decrement, and fetch-and-increment instructions supported on X86 architectures, and provides similar performance to a compare-and-swap-based solution on today's hardware. This raises a fundamental question about minimal set of synchronization instructions that the architectures have to support.
Cite as

Rati Gelashvili, Idit Keidar, Alexander Spiegelman, and Roger Wattenhofer. Brief Announcement: Towards Reduced Instruction Sets for Synchronization. In 31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 91, pp. 53:1-53:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{gelashvili_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2017.53,
  author =	{Gelashvili, Rati and Keidar, Idit and Spiegelman, Alexander and Wattenhofer, Roger},
  title =	{{Brief Announcement: Towards Reduced Instruction Sets for Synchronization}},
  booktitle =	{31st International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2017)},
  pages =	{53:1--53:4},
  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-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.53},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-80201},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2017.53},
  annote =	{Keywords: Consensus hierarchy, universal construction, synchronization instruction.}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.25
Flexible Paxos: Quorum Intersection Revisited

Authors: Heidi Howard, Dahlia Malkhi, and Alexander Spiegelman

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

Abstract
Distributed consensus is integral to modern distributed systems. The widely adopted Paxos algorithm uses two phases, each requiring majority agreement, to reliably reach consensus. In this paper, we demonstrate that Paxos, which lies at the foundation of many production systems, is conservative. Specifically, we observe that each of the phases of Paxos may use non-intersecting quorums. Majority quorums are not necessary as intersection is required only across phases. Using this weakening of the requirements made in the original formulation, we propose Flexible Paxos, which generalizes over the Paxos algorithm to provide flexible quorums. We show that Flexible Paxos is safe, e cient and easy to utilize in existing distributed systems. We discuss far reaching implications of this result. For example, improved availability results from reducing the size of second phase quorums by one when the system size is even, while keeping majority quorums in the first phase. Another example is improved throughput of replication by using much smaller phase 2 quorums, while increasing the leader election (phase 1) quorums. Finally, non intersecting quorums in either first or second phases may enhance the efficiency of both.
Cite as

Heidi Howard, Dahlia Malkhi, and Alexander Spiegelman. Flexible Paxos: Quorum Intersection Revisited. In 20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 70, pp. 25:1-25:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{howard_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.25,
  author =	{Howard, Heidi and Malkhi, Dahlia and Spiegelman, Alexander},
  title =	{{Flexible Paxos: Quorum Intersection Revisited}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016)},
  pages =	{25:1--25:14},
  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-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.25},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-70947},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.25},
  annote =	{Keywords: Paxos, Distributed Consensus, Quorums}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.33
Dynamic Atomic Snapshots

Authors: Alexander Spiegelman and Idit Keidar

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

Abstract
Snapshots are useful tools for monitoring big distributed and parallel systems. In this paper, we adapt the well-known atomic snapshot abstraction to dynamic models with an unbounded number of participating processes. Our dynamic snapshot specification extends the API to allow changing the set of processes whose values should be returned from a scan operation. We introduce the ephemeral memory model, which consists of a dynamically changing set of nodes; when a node is removed, its memory can be immediately reclaimed. In this model, we present an algorithm for wait-free dynamic atomic snapshots.
Cite as

Alexander Spiegelman and Idit Keidar. Dynamic Atomic Snapshots. In 20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 70, pp. 33:1-33:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)

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@InProceedings{spiegelman_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.33,
  author =	{Spiegelman, Alexander and Keidar, Idit},
  title =	{{Dynamic Atomic Snapshots}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2016)},
  pages =	{33:1--33:16},
  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-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.33},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-71028},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2016.33},
  annote =	{Keywords: snapshots, shared memory, dynamic, ephemeral memory}
}
Document
Tutorial
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.2
Dynamic Reconfiguration: A Tutorial (Tutorial)

Authors: Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 46, 19th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2015)

Abstract
A key challenge for distributed systems is the problem of reconfiguration. Clearly, any production storage system that provides data reliability and availability for long periods must be able to reconfigure in order to remove failed or old servers and add healthy or new ones. This is far from trivial since we do not want the reconfiguration management to be centralized or cause a system shutdown. In this tutorial we look into existing reconfigurable storage algorithms. We propose a common model and failure condition capturing their guarantees. We define a reconfiguration problem around which dynamic object solutions may be designed. To demonstrate its strength, we use it to implement dynamic atomic storage. We present a generic framework for solving the reconfiguration problem, show how to recast existing algorithms in terms of this framework, and compare among them.
Cite as

Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi. Dynamic Reconfiguration: A Tutorial (Tutorial). In 19th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 46, pp. 2:1-2:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2016)

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@InProceedings{spiegelman_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.2,
  author =	{Spiegelman, Alexander and Keidar, Idit and Malkhi, Dahlia},
  title =	{{Dynamic Reconfiguration: A Tutorial}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2015)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-98-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2016},
  volume =	{46},
  editor =	{Anceaume, Emmanuelle and Cachin, Christian and Potop-Butucaru, Maria},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-65938},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: Dynamic reconfiguration}
}
Document
Keynote
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.4
Space Bounds for Reliable Storage: Fundamental Limits of Coding (Keynote)

Authors: Alexander Spiegelman, Yuval Cassuto, Gregory Chockler, and Idit Keidar

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 46, 19th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2015)

Abstract
We present here a synopsis of a keynote presentation given by Idit Keidar at OPODIS 2015, the International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, which took place in Rennes, France, on December 14-17 2015.
Cite as

Alexander Spiegelman, Yuval Cassuto, Gregory Chockler, and Idit Keidar. Space Bounds for Reliable Storage: Fundamental Limits of Coding (Keynote). In 19th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 46, pp. 4:1-4:3, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2016)

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@InProceedings{spiegelman_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.4,
  author =	{Spiegelman, Alexander and Cassuto, Yuval and Chockler, Gregory and Keidar, Idit},
  title =	{{Space Bounds for Reliable Storage: Fundamental Limits of Coding}},
  booktitle =	{19th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2015)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:3},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-98-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2016},
  volume =	{46},
  editor =	{Anceaume, Emmanuelle and Cachin, Christian and Potop-Butucaru, Maria},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-65957},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2015.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: distributed storage, impossibility}
}
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