GPoS: Geospatially-aware Proof of Stake

2025-11-03

ACM Transactions on the Web

AI Summary

Existing Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains suffer from severe geographic centralization: a small number of regions monopolize consensus voting power, undermining censorship resistance and network robustness. To address this, we propose Geospatially-aware Proof of Stake (GPoS), the first PoS framework that explicitly incorporates node geographic location as a dynamic weight adjustment factor within Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT)-style consensus protocols (e.g., HotStuff, CometBFT). GPoS introduces a location-aware weight allocation mechanism, quantifying geographic distribution fairness via eigenvector centrality and the Gini coefficient. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that GPoS improves geographic decentralization by 45% on average, while increasing consensus latency and reducing throughput by less than 1.2%—a negligible overhead. This work establishes a spatial-dimension modeling paradigm for PoS consensus, significantly enhancing both geographical fairness and systemic resilience.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Blockchains and distributed ledgers
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Geospatial decentralization is essential for blockchains, ensuring regulatory resilience, robustness, and fairness. We empirically analyze five major Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains—Aptos, Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui—revealing that a few geographic regions dominate consensus voting power, resulting in limited geospatial decentralization. To address this, we propose Geospatially-aware Proof of Stake (GPoS), which integrates geospatial diversity with stake-based voting power. Experimental evaluation demonstrates an average 45% improvement in geospatial decentralization, as measured by the Gini coefficient of Eigenvector centrality, while incurring minimal performance overhead in BFT protocols, including HotStuff and CometBFT. These results demonstrate that GPoS can improve geospatial decentralization while, in our experiments, incurring minimal overhead to consensus performance.

Problem

• Analyzes geographic centralization in major Proof of Stake blockchains
• Proposes geospatially-aware consensus protocol to improve decentralization
• Achieves 45% better geospatial distribution with minimal performance impact

Innovation

• Integrates geospatial diversity with stake-based voting
• Improves decentralization by 45% with minimal overhead
• Works with BFT protocols like HotStuff and CometBFT