Scalable Bias-Resistant Distributed Randomness

Syta, Ewa; Jovanovic, Philipp; Kogias, Eleftherios Kokoris; Gailly, Nicolas; Gasser, Linus; Khoffi, Ismail; Fischer, Michael J.; Ford, Bryan

doi:10.1109/sp.2017.45

Cited by 203 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The node that generates the smallest ticket will be elected as the network-level leader. The leader is expected to run a verifiable random function (e.g., RandHound [181]) and generate a global random string with a valid proof. Upon reception of this random string, other registered nodes are able to compute a permutation based on this string as well as their own identity, and then finish the assignment of shard committees by subdividing their results into equally-sized buckets.…”

Section: B Sharding For Scale-out Throughputmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks

et al. 2019

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The past decade has witnessed the rapid evolution in blockchain technologies, which has attracted tremendous interests from both the research communities and industries. The blockchain network was originated from the Internet financial sector as a decentralized, immutable ledger system for transactional data ordering. Nowadays, it is envisioned as a powerful backbone/framework for decentralized data processing and datadriven self-organization in flat, open-access networks. In particular, the plausible characteristics of decentralization, immutability and self-organization are primarily owing to the unique decentralized consensus mechanisms introduced by blockchain networks. This survey is motivated by the lack of a comprehensive literature review on the development of decentralized consensus mechanisms in blockchain networks. In this survey, we provide a systematic vision of the organization of blockchain networks. By emphasizing the unique characteristics of incentivized consensus in blockchain networks, our in-depth review of the state-ofthe-art consensus protocols is focused on both the perspective of distributed consensus system design and the perspective of incentive mechanism design. From a game-theoretic point of view, we also provide a thorough review on the strategy adoption for self-organization by the individual nodes in the blockchain backbone networks. Consequently, we provide a comprehensive survey on the emerging applications of the blockchain networks in a wide range of areas. We highlight our special interest in how the consensus mechanisms impact these applications. Finally, we discuss several open issues in the protocol design for blockchain consensus and the related potential research directions.

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Section: B Sharding For Scale-out Throughputmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks

et al. 2019

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“…We abstract the source of randomness required for RICE to a function RandomGen() (given in §VI) which can be accessed by all nodes in YODA. This can be built as a part of YODA or as an external source using techniques from [10], [15], [24].…”

Section: Theat Model Assumptions and Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Allowing non-Byzantine nodes to deviate from the protocol makes the problem more interesting and even more challenging. Apart from recently studied challenges like preventing Sybils [18], [31] and generating an unbiased source of randomness in the distributed setting [10], [15], [24], our system must tackle the following challenges:…”

Section: B Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

YODA: Enabling computationally intensive contracts on blockchains with Byzantine and Selfish nodes

Das

Ribeiro

Anand³

2019

Proceedings 2019 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium

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One major shortcoming of permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is that they are unsuitable for running Computationally Intensive smart Contracts (CICs). This prevents such blockchains from running Machine Learning algorithms, Zero-Knowledge proofs, etc. which may need nontrivial computation.In this paper, we present YODA, which is to the best of our knowledge the first solution for efficient computation of CICs in permissionless blockchains with guarantees for a threat model with both Byzantine and selfish nodes. YODA selects one or more execution sets (ES) via Sortition to execute a particular CIC off-chain. One key innovation is the MultI-Round Adaptive Consensus using Likelihood Estimation (MIRACLE) algorithm based on sequential hypothesis testing. MIRACLE allows the execution sets to be small thus making YODA efficient while ensuring correct CIC execution with high probability. It adapts the number of ES sets automatically depending on the concentration of Byzantine nodes in the system and is optimal in terms of the expected number of ES sets used in certain scenarios. Through a suite of economic incentives and technical mechanisms such as the novel Randomness Inserted Contract Execution (RICE) algorithm, we force selfish nodes to behave honestly. We also prove that the honest behavior of selfish nodes is an approximate Nash Equilibrium. We present the system design and details of YODA and prove the security properties of MIRACLE and RICE. Our prototype implementation built on top of Ethereum demonstrates the ability of YODA to run CICs with orders of magnitude higher gas per unit time as well as total gas requirements than Ethereum currently supports. It also demonstrates the low overheads of RICE.

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“…Anyone who refuses to reveal their random number forfeits the bond. [19] describes an elaborate set of protocols to use verifiable secret sharing and Byzantine agreement to generate public random numbers from 3k independent participants, so that the shared random numbers will be trustworthy (and impossible to prevent from being published) so long as at least k + 1 participants are trustworthy. [13] takes a different approach to combining contributions from multiple parties.…”

Section: Commit-then-reveal Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cryptocurrency Smart Contracts for Distributed Consensus of Public Randomness

Mell

Kelsey

Shook

2017

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Most modern electronic devices can produce a random number. However, it is difficult to see how a group of mutually distrusting entities can have confidence in any such hardware-produced stream of random numbers, since the producer could control the output to their gain. In this work, we use public and immutable cryptocurrency smart contracts, along with a set of potentially malicious randomness providers, to produce a trustworthy stream of timestamped public random numbers. Our contract eliminates the ability of a producer to predict or control the generated random numbers, including the stored history of random numbers. We consider and mitigate the threat of collusion between the randomness providers and miners in a second, more complex contract.

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Scalable Bias-Resistant Distributed Randomness

Cited by 203 publications

References 27 publications

A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks

A Survey on Consensus Mechanisms and Mining Strategy Management in Blockchain Networks

YODA: Enabling computationally intensive contracts on blockchains with Byzantine and Selfish nodes

Cryptocurrency Smart Contracts for Distributed Consensus of Public Randomness

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