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International Conference on Information Systems Security

ICISS 2018: Information Systems Security pp 465–480Cite as

(Invited Paper) on the Security of Blockchain Consensus Protocols

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11281))

Abstract

In the last decade, several permissionless proof-of-work blockchain protocols have focused on scalability. Since these protocols are very difficult to change once deployed, their robustness and security are of paramount importance. This paper summarizes the desired end properties of blockchain consensus protocols and sheds light on the critical role of theoretical analyses of their design. We summarize the major paradigms in prior constructions and discuss open issues in this space.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is 217, 279, 849, 996 USD at the time of writing [5].

  2. 2.

    Earliest one in the total order.

  3. 3.

    King at el. have presented the first theoretical result with polynomial round complexity recently in the model where no secret channels are constructed; the construction tolerates less than \(1\%\) Byzantine adversary [12, 39].

  4. 4.

    For any security parameter \(\lambda > 0\), an event happening with high probability (w.h.p) implies that event happens with probability \(1-O(1/2^\lambda )\).

  5. 5.

    Verifiable random functions (VRFs) have been used to probabilistically select identity sets without eagerly revealing the identities selected [32, 41].

  6. 6.

    The probability of a picked identity being Byzantine in the sample set is f, and honest is \(1-f\). The analysis examines two Binomial random variables, the number of honest and Byzantine adversaries picked in an indentity set, such that their ratio does not exceed the tolerance of the BA algorithm. When Nakamoto-style PoW is used to create identities, the number of identities created per unit time (by setting an appropriate puzzle difficulty), is approximated well by a Poisson random variable.

  7. 7.

    PBFT is a leader-based protocol and may have multiple rounds, which depends on the probability of a dishonest leader being chosen at a particular round triggering a “view change” sub-step.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Hung Dang for his helpful comments on the work. We thank sponsors of the Crystal Center at NUS, which has supported this work. All opinions presented in this work are those of the authors only.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Sourav Das, Aashish Kolluri, Prateek Saxena & Haifeng Yu

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  1. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

    Vinod Ganapathy

  2. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Trent Jaeger

  3. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    R.K. Shyamasundar

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Das, S., Kolluri, A., Saxena, P., Yu, H. (2018). (Invited Paper) on the Security of Blockchain Consensus Protocols. In: Ganapathy, V., Jaeger, T., Shyamasundar, R. (eds) Information Systems Security. ICISS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11281. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05171-6_24

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