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MWPoW+: A Strong Consensus Protocol for Intra-Shard Consensus in Blockchain Sharding

Published:18 May 2023Publication History
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Abstract

Blockchain sharding splits a blockchain into several shards where consensus is reached at the shard level rather than over the entire blockchain. It improves transaction throughput and reduces the computational resources required of individual nodes. But a derivation of trustworthy consensus within a shard becomes an issue as the longest chain based mechanisms used in conventional blockchains can no longer be used. Instead, a vote-based consensus mechanism must be employed. However, existing vote-based Byzantine fault tolerance consensus protocols do not offer sufficient security guarantees for sharded blockchains. First, when used to support consensus where only one block is allowed at a time (binary consensus), these protocols are susceptible to progress-hindering attacks (i.e., unable to reach a consensus). Second, when used to support a stronger type of consensus where multiple concurrent blocks are allowed (strong consensus), their tolerance of adversary nodes is low. This article proposes a new consensus protocol to address all these issues. We call the new protocol MWPoW+, as its basic framework is based on the existing Multiple Winners Proof of Work (MWPoW) protocol but includes new mechanisms to address the issues mentioned previously. MWPoW+ is a vote-based protocol for strong consensus, asynchronous in consensus derivation but synchronous in communication. We prove that it can tolerate up to f < n/2 adversary nodes in a n-node system as if using a binary consensus protocol and does not suffer from progress-hindering attacks.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
        ACM Transactions on Internet Technology  Volume 23, Issue 2
        May 2023
        276 pages
        ISSN:1533-5399
        EISSN:1557-6051
        DOI:10.1145/3597634
        • Editor:
        • Ling Liu
        Issue’s Table of Contents

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        Publication History

        • Published: 18 May 2023
        • Online AM: 13 February 2023
        • Accepted: 31 January 2023
        • Revised: 17 September 2022
        • Received: 3 February 2021
        Published in toit Volume 23, Issue 2

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