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Mainstay: A hybrid protocol ensuring ledger temporality and security

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Abstract

To enhance the scalability of blockchain ledger structure, researchers have abandoned the traditional single-chain structure and used the structure of Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) to achieve high-concurrency processing of transactions. The DAG-based ledger requires a specific topological structure and block sorting rules to ensure the temporality and security of the ledger structure. This paper proposes a hybrid protocol called Mainstay with a double-layer structure, including the DAG-Ledger layer and the NC-Chain layer. The DAG-Ledger layer uses PHANTOM structure to confirm the transaction block order; the NC-Chain uses dynamic committee elections, voting, and fast verification to form a blockchain similar to the Nakamoto style, and each block of the NC-Chain requires committee members to calculate the Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) to generate a quorum certificate(QC), which can ensure the stability and security of the DAG-Ledger layer ledger sequence. By experimental comparison, we conclude that the Mainstay protocol can effectively reduce the probability of malicious attackers successfully attacking the ledger structure.

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Author notes

  1. Zhiqiang Du, Yanfang Fu, Muhong Huang, and Wendong Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, Xi’an Technological University, Shaanxi, Xi’an, 710021, China

    Liangxin Liu, Zhiqiang Du, Yanfang Fu & Wendong Zhang

  2. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Sichuan, Chengdu, 611731, China

    Muhong Huang

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  1. Liangxin Liu
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Contributions

Liu: Liangxin Liu was responsible for the drafting and revision of the content of the manuscript, as well as the experimental design and data analysis. Du: Zhiqiang Du provided in-depth thinking and innovative direction for research and made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development and protocol design. Huang: Muhong Huang provided professional technical guidance and advice in this research and played a crucial role in the drafting of the manuscript and modification of the content. Fu: Yanfang Fu also participated in drafting the manuscript and reviewing the content. She approved the final version of the publication, including the references. Zhang: Wendong Zhang was responsible for the revision of the content of the manuscript, statistics of experimental data and visualization of experimental results in this study.

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Correspondence to Yanfang Fu.

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Liu, L., Du, Z., Fu, Y. et al. Mainstay: A hybrid protocol ensuring ledger temporality and security. Peer-to-Peer Netw. Appl. 17, 3948–3963 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-024-01797-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-024-01797-6

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