Paper 2020/601 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2020/601 ↗
Everything is a Race and Nakamoto Always Wins
Abstract
Nakamoto invented the longest chain protocol, and claimed its security by analyzing the private double-spend attack, a race between the adversary and the honest nodes to grow a longer chain. But is it the worst attack? We answer the question in the affirmative for three classes of longest chain protocols, designed for different consensus models: 1) Nakamoto's original Proof-of-Work protocol; 2) Ouroboros and SnowWhite Proof-of-Stake protocols; 3) Chia Proof-of-Space protocol. As a consequence, exact characterization of the maximum tolerable adversary power is obtained for each protocol as a function of the average block time normalized by the network delay. The security analysis of these protocols is performed in a unified manner by a novel method of reducing all attacks to a race between the adversary and the honest nodes.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
PDF- Category
- Applications
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- History
- 2020-08-30: last updated
- 2020-05-22: published
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2020/601
- License
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2020/601,
author = {Amir Dembo and Sreeram Kannan and Ertem Nusret Tas and David Tse and Pramod Viswanath and Xuechao Wang and Ofer Zeitouni},
title = {Everything is a Race and Nakamoto Always Wins},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2020/601},
year = {2020},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/601}
}