Player-Replaceability and Forensic Support Are Two Sides of the Same (Crypto) Coin

Peiyao Sheng, Gerui Wang, Kartik Nayak, Sreeram Kannan, Pramod Viswanath

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Player-replaceability is a property of a blockchain protocol that ensures every step of the protocol is executed by an unpredictably random (small) set of players; this guarantees security against a fully adaptive adversary and is a crucial property in building permissionless blockchains. Forensic Support is a property of a blockchain protocol that provides the ability, with cryptographic integrity, to identify malicious parties when there is a safety violation; this provides the ability to enforce punishments for adversarial behavior and is a crucial component of incentive mechanism designs for blockchains. Player-replaceability and strong forensic support are both desirable properties, yet, none of the existing blockchain protocols have both properties. Our main result is to construct a new BFT protocol that is player-replaceable and has maximum forensic support. The key invention is the notion of a “transition certificate”, without which we show that natural adaptations of extant BFT and longest chain protocols do not lead to the desired goal of simultaneous player-replaceability and forensic support. (The full version of paper is available in https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1513.)

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationFinancial Cryptography and Data Security - 27th International Conference, FC 2023, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsFoteini Baldimtsi, Christian Cachin
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages56-74
Number of pages19
ISBN (Print)9783031477539
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024
Event27th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2023 - Bol, Croatia
Duration: May 1 2023May 5 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13950
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference27th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2023
Country/TerritoryCroatia
CityBol
Period5/1/235/5/23

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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