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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.8

Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust

Authors: Ignacio Amores-Sesar, Christian Cachin, Simon Holmgaard Kamp, and Juan Villacis

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 361, 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)

Abstract

In distributed systems with asymmetric trust, each participant is free to make its own trust assumptions about others, captured by an asymmetric quorum system. This contrasts with ordinary, symmetric quorum systems and threshold models, where trust assumptions are uniformly shared among participants. Fundamental problems like reliable broadcast and consensus are unsolvable in the asymmetric model if quorum systems satisfy only the classical properties of consistency and availability. Existing approaches overcome this by introducing stronger assumptions. We show that some of these assumptions are overly restrictive, so much so that they effectively eliminate the benefits of asymmetric trust. To address this, we propose a new approach to characterize asymmetric problems and, building upon it, present algorithms for reliable broadcast and consensus that require weaker assumptions than previous solutions. Our methods are general and can be extended to other core problems in systems with asymmetric trust.

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Ignacio Amores-Sesar, Christian Cachin, Simon Holmgaard Kamp, and Juan Villacis. Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust. In 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 361, pp. 8:1-8:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{amoressesar_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.8,
  author =	{Amores-Sesar, Ignacio and Cachin, Christian and Kamp, Simon Holmgaard and Villacis, Juan},
  title =	{{Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust}},
  booktitle =	{29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-409-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{361},
  editor =	{Arusoaie, Andrei and Onica, Emanuel and Spear, Michael and Tucci-Piergiovanni, Sara},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-251812},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Asymmetric Trust, Quorum Systems, Reliable Broadcast, Consensus}
}

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Brief Announcement

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.50

Brief Announcement: Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust

Authors: Christian Cachin and Juan Villacis

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

Abstract

In protocols with asymmetric trust, each participant is free to make its own trust assumptions about others, captured by an asymmetric quorum system. This contrasts with ordinary, symmetric quorum systems and threshold models, where trust assumptions are uniformly shared among participants. Fundamental problems like reliable broadcast and consensus are unsolvable in the asymmetric model if quorum systems satisfy only the classical properties of consistency and availability. As a result, existing solutions introduce stronger assumptions to circumvent this limitation. We show that some requirements used by state-of-the-art approaches are overly restrictive, so much so that they effectively eliminate the benefits of asymmetric trust. To address this, we propose a new approach to characterize asymmetric problems and, building upon it, present an asymmetric asynchronous unauthenticated reliable broadcast algorithm that significantly weakens the assumptions needed to solve the problem. Our techniques are general and can be readily adapted to other core problems in the asymmetric trust setting.

Cite as

Christian Cachin and Juan Villacis. Brief Announcement: Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust. In 39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 356, pp. 50:1-50:7, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{cachin_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2025.50,
  author =	{Cachin, Christian and Villacis, Juan},
  title =	{{Brief Announcement: Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust}},
  booktitle =	{39th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2025)},
  pages =	{50:1--50:7},
  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.2025.50},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-248667},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2025.50},
  annote =	{Keywords: Asymmetric Trust, Quorum Systems, Reliable Broadcast}
}

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Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust

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Brief Announcement: Weaker Assumptions for Asymmetric Trust

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