Formal Modeling and Verification of a Blockchain-Based Crowdsourcing Consensus Protocol

Afzaal, Hamra; Imran, Muhammad; Janjua, Muhammad Umar; Gochhayat, Sarada Prasad

doi:10.1109/access.2022.3141982

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…In our previous works, to address the issues of trustworthy leader and validators selection, we have proposed formally verified consensus protocols, i.e., secure and trustworthy blockchain-based crowdsourcing (STBC), trust-based blockchain crowdsourcing (TBC), and trust and transactions chain (TTC) consensus protocols [48]- [50]. These consensus protocols are designed based on various trust factors to increase their reliability.…”

Section: Bft Consensus Protocolmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The model is deemed general, with the potential for extending verification to other critical properties like liveness for the Algorand protocol. In our previous works, we have proposed and formally verified the STBC, TBC, and TTC consensus protocols using the PAT model checker [48]- [50]. The STBC protocol verifies the safety and fault-tolerance properties, the TBC protocol verifies the persistence and liveness properties, and the TTC protocol verifies the fraudresilience properties.…”

Section: E Formal Verification Of Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Formal Verification of Justification and Finalization in Beacon Chain

Afzaal,

Zafar,

Tehseen

et al. 2024

IEEE Access

Self Cite

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In recent years, Beacon Chain known as the core of Ethereum 2.0, has gained considerable attention since its launch. Many validators have staked billions of Ether in the Proof of Stake (PoS) network. It is a mission critical system and its security and stability rely on the justification and finalization of checkpoints. These are essential elements of the Casper FFG consensus algorithm utilized by the Beacon Chain. This process is critical for establishing a trustworthy foundation and finalizing proposed blocks by confirming agreed upon checkpoints. Hence, ensuring the correctness of checkpoints in the Beacon Chain has significant importance because any bug in it can cause serious implications. To address this challenge, we employ formal methods, a popular mathematical approach used for verifying the correctness of such critical systems. In this work, we have done formal verification of the processes of Beacon Chain state initialization, justification and finalization of checkpoints using the Process Analysis Toolkit (PAT) model checker. The adoption of model checking through the PAT model checker presents a novel contribution of our work, as this approach is not previously utilized in the formal verification of Beacon Chain. The presented work is specified through the Communicating Sequential Programs, formal specification language, and the properties are described through Linear Temporal Logic. The PAT model checker takes the specified formal model and properties as input to assess whether the properties are satisfied. The properties are analyzed with respect to the verification time, visited states, total transitions, and memory used. Through this research, we aim to increase confidence in the correctness and reliability of the Beacon Chain.INDEX TERMS Ethereum 2.0, Beacon Chain, Justification and finalization, Model checking, PAT

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Section: Bft Consensus Protocolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E Formal Verification Of Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Verification of Justification and Finalization in Beacon Chain

Afzaal,

Zafar,

Tehseen

et al. 2024

IEEE Access

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The consensus algorithm is an essential element of any blockchain system because it guarantees the integrity of the distributed database and ensures that transactions are recorded accurately. Confirming transactions, adding them to the blockchain, and preventing double spending are the responsibilities of the consensus algorithm sets via use of Federated Learning Consensus Mechanism (FLCM) and other methods [16,17,18,19,20].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nthcmb: Design of an Efficient Novel Trust-Based Hybrid Consensus Model for Securing Blockchain Deployments

Kapse,

Malik,

Kumar

2024

AEJ

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Blockchain deployments require efficient consensus models in order to be scaled for larger networks. Existing consensus models either use stake-levels, trust-levels, authority-levels, etc. or their combinations in order to reduce mining delay while maintaining higher security levels. But these models either have higher energy requirements, lower security, or have linear/exponential relationship between mining delay and length of the chains. Due to these restrictions, the applicability of these models is affected when deployed under real-time network scenarios. To overcome these issues, this text proposes design of an efficient novel trust-based hybrid consensus model for securing blockchain deployments. The proposed model initially uses a hybrid consensus model that fuses Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS) with Proof-of-Temporal-Trust (PoTT) for improving security while maintaining higher Quality of Service (QoS) levels. The PoTT Model fuses together temporal mining delay, temporal mining energy, throughput and block mining efficiency in order to generate miner-level trusts. These trust values are fused with Work efficiency and Stake levels and used for selection of miners. The selected miners are used for serving block addition requests, which assists in improving mining speed by 3.2%, reducing energy consumption 4.5%, and improving throughput by 8.5%, while improving block mining efficiency by 2.9% when compared with existing mining optimization models. This performance was validated under Sybil, Finney, Man-in-the-Middle, and Spoofing attacks. Performance of the model was observed to be consistent even under attacks, thereby making it useful for real-time network scenarios.

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“…Only a few works have been carried out to ensure the correctness of novel consensus protocols. For instance, Hamra et al [20], Wai Yan Maung Maung et al [21] present formal models built using CSP# and verified using PAT model checker. While they have inspired our formal model, the proposed consensus protocol fundamentally differs from theirs.…”

Section: E Shamir's Secret Sharing (Sss) Schemementioning

confidence: 99%

Proof-of-Monitoring (PoM): A Novel Consensus Mechanism for Blockchain-Based Secure Service Level Agreement Management

Weerasinghe

Liyanage

Ylianttila

2023

IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manage.

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In the current 5th Generation (5G) networking paradigm, the enforcement of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is a non-trivial measure to ensure the scope and the quality of services and standards between tenants and service providers (SPs). On top of this, Secure Service Level Agreements (SSLA) are introduced to ensure that SPs deliver the most critical and required security-related standards defined in the contract, such as integrity, confidentiality, availability, nonrepudiation, and privacy assurance. However, with the tendency for more distributed and multi-stakeholder networking architectures in next-generation networks, the management process of such SSLAs will be challenging due to the diversified security vulnerabilities and complexity of underlying technologies. Although blockchain is emerging as a platform to facilitate such distributed SSLA/SLA management frameworks, its currently available consensus mechanisms are more generic. Still, they need to improve in terms of applying in multi-stakeholder networks. Therefore, this paper presents a novel consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Monitoring (PoM) for a blockchain-based novel SSLA management framework. Moreover, we provide details about the prototype implementation of our proposed consensus algorithm and SSLA management framework. It is proven by comparing our proposal with the other existing solutions that our solution outperforms in many aspects, such as energy consumption, computation cost, and security features.

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Formal Modeling and Verification of a Blockchain-Based Crowdsourcing Consensus Protocol

Cited by 14 publications

References 55 publications

Formal Verification of Justification and Finalization in Beacon Chain

Formal Verification of Justification and Finalization in Beacon Chain

Nthcmb: Design of an Efficient Novel Trust-Based Hybrid Consensus Model for Securing Blockchain Deployments

Proof-of-Monitoring (PoM): A Novel Consensus Mechanism for Blockchain-Based Secure Service Level Agreement Management

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