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Lever: Making Intensive Validation Practical on Blockchain

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Information Security Practice and Experience (ISPEC 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14341))

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Abstract

Blockchain heralds the dawn of decentralized applications that coordinate proper computations without the need for prior trust. Existing blockchain solutions, however, are incapable of dealing with intensive validation. Duplicated execution leads to limited throughput and unacceptable expenses. Furthermore, the absence of secure incentive mechanisms derives undesired dilemmas among rational verifiers. This work presents Lever, the first off-chain solution that makes intensive validation cost-efficient and scalable among rational verifiers. To achieve the best scalability, Lever curtails the scale of each validation to a single node and introduces novel challenge-response games between potential adversaries and rational stakeholders, optimizing validation redundancy according to the practical adversarial capability confronted. Meanwhile, compelling incentive design efficiently transfers adversary collateral to specialized rewards for honest participants, therefore allowing the user to lever sufficient endorsement with minimum cost. A backstop protocol is designed to resolve intractable disputes and circumvent the well-known Verifier’s Dilemma. Experiments show that Lever significantly improves the throughput and reduces expenses of intensive validation with a slight tradeoff in latency. It is also robust to conceivable attacks on validation and performs distinguishable ability to purify Byzantine participants.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the first round, it is determined by the correctness of VIT.

  2. 2.

    Here, fees are extracted as commissions for backbone confirmation.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by the National Key R &D Program of China through project 2020YFB1005600, the Natural Science Foundation of China through projects U21A20467, 61932011, 61972019 and Beijing Natural Science Foundation through project M21031 and CCF-Huawei Huyanglin Foundation through project CCF-HuaweiBC2021009.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Mingming Wang

  2. School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Qianhong Wu

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  1. Mingming Wang
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Correspondence to Qianhong Wu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Weizhi Meng

  2. Xidian University, Xi'an, China

    Zheng Yan

  3. University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Vincenzo Piuri

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Wang, M., Wu, Q. (2023). Lever: Making Intensive Validation Practical on Blockchain. In: Meng, W., Yan, Z., Piuri, V. (eds) Information Security Practice and Experience. ISPEC 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14341. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7032-2_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7032-2_26

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