[2308.05096] Optimal Flexible Consensus and its Application to Ethereum
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Computer Science > Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing

arXiv:2308.05096 (cs)
[Submitted on 9 Aug 2023 (v1), last revised 3 Dec 2023 (this version, v3)]

Title:Optimal Flexible Consensus and its Application to Ethereum

Authors:Joachim Neu, Srivatsan Sridhar, Lei Yang, David Tse
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Abstract:Classic BFT consensus protocols guarantee safety and liveness for all clients if fewer than one-third of replicas are faulty. However, in applications such as high-value payments, some clients may want to prioritize safety over liveness. Flexible consensus allows each client to opt for a higher safety resilience, albeit at the expense of reduced liveness resilience. We present the first construction that allows optimal safety--liveness tradeoff for every client simultaneously. This construction is modular and is realized as an add-on applied on top of an existing consensus protocol. The add-on consists of an additional round of voting and permanent locking done by the replicas, to sidestep a sub-optimal quorum-intersection-based constraint present in previous solutions. We adapt our construction to the existing Ethereum protocol to derive optimal flexible confirmation rules that clients can adopt unilaterally without requiring system-wide changes. This is possible because existing Ethereum protocol features can double as the extra voting and locking. We demonstrate an implementation using Ethereum's consensus API.
Comments: To be published at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024
Subjects: Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
Cite as: arXiv:2308.05096 [cs.DC]
  (or arXiv:2308.05096v3 [cs.DC] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.05096

Submission history

From: Srivatsan Sridhar [view email]
[v1] Wed, 9 Aug 2023 17:46:01 UTC (19,443 KB)
[v2] Thu, 10 Aug 2023 02:28:14 UTC (19,443 KB)
[v3] Sun, 3 Dec 2023 21:34:34 UTC (19,447 KB)
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