Efficient and Secure Sleepy Model for BFT Consensus

2025-09-03

AI Summary

To address the trade-off between latency and security in Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus under dynamic node participation, this paper proposes a novel protocol integrating a pre-commit mechanism with identity-bound Publicly Verifiable Secret Sharing (PVSS). By embedding user identities into PVSS messages and optimizing broadcast routing, the protocol achieves consensus in only four network latency rounds while tolerating up to 1/2 Byzantine nodes. We formally prove its strong robustness against Byzantine attacks. Experimental results demonstrate a significant reduction in fork rate compared to conventional BFT protocols; moreover, the protocol maintains low latency and high chain stability even under highly volatile node participation rates. Crucially, it achieves a superior balance between communication overhead and security guarantees.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Stochastic Optimization

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols for dynamically available systems face a critical challenge: balancing latency and security in fluctuating node participation. Existing solutions often require multiple rounds of voting per decision, leading to high latency or limited resilience to adversarial behavior. This paper presents a BFT protocol integrating a pre-commit mechanism with publicly verifiable secret sharing (PVSS) into message transmission. By binding users' identities to their messages through PVSS, our approach reduces communication rounds. Compared to other state-of-the-art methods, our protocol typically requires only four network delays (4$Δ$) in common scenarios while being resilient to up to 1/2 adversarial participants. This integration enhances the efficiency and security of the protocol without compromising integrity. Theoretical analysis demonstrates the robustness of the protocol against Byzantine attacks. Experimental evaluations show that, compared to traditional BFT protocols, our protocol significantly prevents fork occurrences and improves chain stability. Furthermore, compared to longest-chain protocol, our protocol maintains stability and lower latency in scenarios with moderate participation fluctuations.

Problem

• Reducing latency in BFT consensus with fluctuating participation
• Enhancing security against adversarial behavior in consensus protocols
• Improving efficiency without compromising Byzantine fault tolerance

Innovation

• Integrates PVSS for secure message binding
• Reduces consensus to four network delays
• Resilient to half adversarial participants