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Sharding-Based Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol: Security Analysis

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Blockchain and Applications, 4th International Congress (BLOCKCHAIN 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 595))

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Abstract

Blockchain technology has been gaining great interest from a variety of sectors including healthcare, supply chain, and cryptocurrencies. However, Blockchain suffers from its limited ability to scale (i.e., low throughput and high latency). Several solutions have been proposed to tackle this issue. In particular, sharding proved that it is one of the most promising solutions to Blockchain scalability. Sharding can be divided into two major categories: (1) Sharding-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) Blockchain protocols, and (2) Sharding-based Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Blockchain protocols. The two categories achieve a good performance (i.e., good throughput with a reasonable latency), but raise security issues. This article focuses on the second category. In this paper, we provide a probabilistic model to analyze the security of these protocols. More specifically, we compute the probability of committing a faulty block and measure the security by computing the number of years to fail. Finally, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model via a numerical analysis.

Supported by CIRRELT – Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Montreal, Montréal, QC, H3T 1N8, Canada

    Abdelatif Hafid & Abdelhakim Hafid

  2. Mizuho Securities, New York, NY, 10022, USA

    Adil Senhaji

Authors
  1. Abdelatif Hafid
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  2. Abdelhakim Hafid
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  3. Adil Senhaji
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Abdelatif Hafid .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Informática y Automática, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Javier Prieto

  2. Parque Tecnológico de la Salud (PTS), Granada, Spain

    Francisco Luis Benítez Martínez

  3. University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Stefano Ferretti

  4. Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    David Arroyo Guardeño

  5. Facultad de Derecho, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Pedro Tomás Nevado-Batalla

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Hafid, A., Hafid, A., Senhaji, A. (2023). Sharding-Based Proof-of-Stake Blockchain Protocol: Security Analysis. In: Prieto, J., Benítez Martínez, F.L., Ferretti, S., Arroyo Guardeño, D., Tomás Nevado-Batalla, P. (eds) Blockchain and Applications, 4th International Congress . BLOCKCHAIN 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 595. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21229-1_5

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