Abstract
Decentralized consensus protocols based on proof-of-work (PoW) mining require nodes to download data linear in the size of the blockchain even if they make use of Simplified Payment Verification (SPV). In this work, we put forth a new formalization of proof-of-work verification by introducing a primitive called Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work (NIPoPoWs). We improve upon the previously known SPV NIPoPoW by proposing a novel NIPoPoW construction using superblocks, blocks that are much heavier than usual blocks, which capture the fact that proof-of-work took place without sending all of it. Unlike a traditional blockchain client which must verify the entire linearly-growing chain of PoWs, clients based on superblock NIPoPoWs require resources only logarithmic in the length of the chain, instead downloading a compressed form of the chain. Superblock NIPoPoWs are thus succinct proofs and, due to their non-interactivity, require only a single message between the prover and the verifier of the transaction. Our construction allows the creation of superlight clients which can synchronize with the network quickly even if they remain offline for large periods of time. Our scheme is provably secure in the Bitcoin Backbone model. From a theoretical point of view, we are the first to propose a cryptographic prover–verifier definition for decentralized consensus protocols and the first to give a construction which can synchronize non-interactively using only a logarithmically-sized message.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Giorgos Panagiotakos at the University of Edinburgh, Peter Gaz̆i at IOHK, and Nikos Leonardos at the University of Athens for their insights regarding the attack against the interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work scheme. We also wish to thank Giorgos Christoglou at Imperial College London and Kostis Karantias at the University of Ioannina for their insights and comments while they implemented the schemes described in this paper as part of their master theses, as well as Sebastien Guillemot at Emurgo R&D who provided valuable feedback. All three of them read many versions of this paper in detail and their contributions helped significantly shape and improve it.
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Kiayias, A., Miller, A., Zindros, D. (2020). Non-interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work. In: Bonneau, J., Heninger, N. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12059. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51280-4_27
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