Paper 2023/1556 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2023/1556 ↗
Better Safe than Sorry: Recovering after Adversarial Majority
Abstract
The security of blockchain protocols is a combination of two properties: safety and liveness. It is well known that no blockchain protocol can provide both to sleepy (intermittently online) clients under adversarial majority. However, safety is more critical in that a single safety violation can cause users to lose money. At the same time, liveness must not be lost forever. We show that, in a synchronous network, it is possible to maintain safety for all clients even during adversarial majority, and recover liveness after honest majority is restored. Our solution takes the form of a recovery gadget that can be applied to any protocol with certificates (such as HotStuff, Streamlet, Tendermint, and their variants).
Metadata
- Available format(s)
PDF- Category
- Cryptographic protocols
- Publication info
- Preprint.
- History
- 2023-11-03: last updated
- 2023-10-10: published
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2023/1556
- License
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/1556,
author = {Srivatsan Sridhar and Dionysis Zindros and David Tse},
title = {Better Safe than Sorry: Recovering after Adversarial Majority},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2023/1556},
year = {2023},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1556}
}