4 Search Results for "Bravo, Manuel"


Document
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
Vertical Atomic Broadcast and Passive Replication

Authors: Manuel Bravo, Gregory Chockler, Alexey Gotsman, Alejandro Naser-Pastoriza, and Christian Roldán

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 319, 38th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2024)


Abstract
Atomic broadcast is a reliable communication abstraction ensuring that all processes deliver the same set of messages in a common global order. It is a fundamental building block for implementing fault-tolerant services using either active (aka state-machine) or passive (aka primary-backup) replication. We consider the problem of implementing reconfigurable atomic broadcast, which further allows users to dynamically alter the set of participating processes, e.g., in response to failures or changes in the load. We give a complete safety and liveness specification of this communication abstraction and propose a new protocol implementing it, called Vertical Atomic Broadcast, which uses an auxiliary service to facilitate reconfiguration. In contrast to prior proposals, our protocol significantly reduces system downtime when reconfiguring from a functional configuration by allowing it to continue processing messages while agreement on the next configuration is in progress. Furthermore, we show that this advantage can be maintained even when our protocol is modified to support a stronger variant of atomic broadcast required for passive replication.

Cite as

Manuel Bravo, Gregory Chockler, Alexey Gotsman, Alejandro Naser-Pastoriza, and Christian Roldán. Vertical Atomic Broadcast and Passive Replication. In 38th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 319, pp. 10:1-10:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)


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@InProceedings{bravo_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2024.10,
  author =	{Bravo, Manuel and Chockler, Gregory and Gotsman, Alexey and Naser-Pastoriza, Alejandro and Rold\'{a}n, Christian},
  title =	{{Vertical Atomic Broadcast and Passive Replication}},
  booktitle =	{38th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2024)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-352-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{319},
  editor =	{Alistarh, Dan},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2024.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-212363},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2024.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Reconfiguration, consensus, replication}
}
Document
Liveness and Latency of Byzantine State-Machine Replication

Authors: Manuel Bravo, Gregory Chockler, and Alexey Gotsman

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 246, 36th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2022)


Abstract
Byzantine state-machine replication (SMR) ensures the consistency of replicated state in the presence of malicious replicas and lies at the heart of the modern blockchain technology. Byzantine SMR protocols often guarantee safety under all circumstances and liveness only under synchrony. However, guaranteeing liveness even under this assumption is nontrivial. So far we have lacked systematic ways of incorporating liveness mechanisms into Byzantine SMR protocols, which often led to subtle bugs. To close this gap, we introduce a modular framework to facilitate the design of provably live and efficient Byzantine SMR protocols. Our framework relies on a view abstraction generated by a special SMR synchronizer primitive to drive the agreement on command ordering. We present a simple formal specification of an SMR synchronizer and its bounded-space implementation under partial synchrony. We also apply our specification to prove liveness and analyze the latency of three Byzantine SMR protocols via a uniform methodology. In particular, one of these results yields what we believe is the first rigorous liveness proof for the algorithmic core of the seminal PBFT protocol.

Cite as

Manuel Bravo, Gregory Chockler, and Alexey Gotsman. Liveness and Latency of Byzantine State-Machine Replication. In 36th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 246, pp. 12:1-12:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)


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@InProceedings{bravo_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2022.12,
  author =	{Bravo, Manuel and Chockler, Gregory and Gotsman, Alexey},
  title =	{{Liveness and Latency of Byzantine State-Machine Replication}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2022)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-255-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{246},
  editor =	{Scheideler, Christian},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2022.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-172037},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2022.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Replication, blockchain, partial synchrony, liveness}
}
Document
Making Byzantine Consensus Live

Authors: Manuel Bravo, Gregory Chockler, and Alexey Gotsman

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


Abstract
Partially synchronous Byzantine consensus protocols typically structure their execution into a sequence of views, each with a designated leader process. The key to guaranteeing liveness in these protocols is to ensure that all correct processes eventually overlap in a view with a correct leader for long enough to reach a decision. We propose a simple view synchronizer abstraction that encapsulates the corresponding functionality for Byzantine consensus protocols, thus simplifying their design. We present a formal specification of a view synchronizer and its implementation under partial synchrony, which runs in bounded space despite tolerating message loss during asynchronous periods. We show that our synchronizer specification is strong enough to guarantee liveness for single-shot versions of several well-known Byzantine consensus protocols, including HotStuff, Tendermint, PBFT and SBFT. We furthermore give precise latency bounds for these protocols when using our synchronizer. By factoring out the functionality of view synchronization we are able to specify and analyze the protocols in a uniform framework, which allows comparing them and highlights trade-offs.

Cite as

Manuel Bravo, Gregory Chockler, and Alexey Gotsman. Making Byzantine Consensus Live. In 34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 179, pp. 23:1-23:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)


Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{bravo_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2020.23,
  author =	{Bravo, Manuel and Chockler, Gregory and Gotsman, Alexey},
  title =	{{Making Byzantine Consensus Live}},
  booktitle =	{34th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2020)},
  pages =	{23:1--23:17},
  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.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2020.23},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-131013},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2020.23},
  annote =	{Keywords: Byzantine consensus, blockchain, partial synchrony, liveness}
}
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