PolyShard: Coded Sharding Achieves Linearly Scaling Efficiency and Security Simultaneously

Songze Li, Mingchao Yu, Chien Sheng Yang, A. Salman Avestimehr, Sreeram Kannan, Pramod Viswanath

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

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Today's blockchain designs suffer from a trilemma claiming that no blockchain system can simultaneously achieve decentralization, security, and performance scalability. For current blockchain systems, as more nodes join the network, the efficiency of the system (computation, communication, and storage) stays constant at best. A leading idea for enabling blockchains to scale efficiency is the notion of sharding: different subsets of nodes handle different portions of the blockchain, thereby reducing the load for each individual node. However, existing sharding proposals achieve efficiency scaling by compromising on trust - corrupting the nodes in a given shard will lead to the permanent loss of the corresponding portion of data. In this paper, we settle the trilemma by demonstrating a new protocol for coded storage and computation in blockchains. In particular, we propose PolyShard: "polynomially coded sharding" scheme that achieves information-theoretic upper bounds on the efficiency of the storage, system throughput, as well as on trust, thus enabling a truly scalable system.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2020 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2020 - Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages203-208
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728164328
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event2020 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2020 - Los Angeles, United States
Duration: Jul 21 2020Jul 26 2020

Publication series

NameIEEE International Symposium on Information Theory - Proceedings
Volume2020-June
ISSN (Print)2157-8095

Conference

Conference2020 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, ISIT 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityLos Angeles
Period7/21/207/26/20

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Information Systems
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Applied Mathematics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'PolyShard: Coded Sharding Achieves Linearly Scaling Efficiency and Security Simultaneously'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this