Improving Blockchain Consistency Bound by Assigning Weights to Random Blocks
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Gong, Xueping; Zhang, Qing; Li, Huizhong; Zhang, Jiheng
署名单位：
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
刊物名称：
OPERATIONS RESEARCH
ISSN/ISSBN：
0030-364X
DOI：
10.1287/opre.2022.0463
发表日期：
2025
页码：
2156-2176
关键词：
摘要：
Blockchains based on the celebrated Nakamoto consensus protocol have shown promise in several applications, including cryptocurrencies. However, these blockchains have inherent scalability limits caused by the protocol's consensus properties. In particular, the consistency property demonstrates a tight trade-off between block production speed and the system's security in terms of resisting adversarial attacks. As such, this paper proposes a novel method called Ironclad, which improves the blockchain consistency bound by assigning a different weight to randomly selected blocks. We apply our method to the original Nakamoto protocol and rigorously prove that such a combination can significantly improve the consistency bound by analyzing the fundamental consensus properties. This kind of improvement enables a much faster block production rate than the original Nakamoto protocol but with the same security guarantee.