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Publication Detail
Deconstructing Stellar Consensus (Extended Version)
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Publication Type:Journal article
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Authors:García-Pérez Á, Schett MA
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Publication date:12/11/2019
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Keywords:cs.DC, cs.DC
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Author URL:
Abstract
Some of the recent blockchain proposals, such as Stellar and Ripple, allow
for open membership while using quorum-like structures typical for classical
Byzantine consensus with closed membership. This is achieved by constructing
quorums in a decentralised way: each participant independently chooses whom to
trust, and quorums arise from these individual decisions. Unfortunately, the
consensus protocols underlying such blockchains are poorly understood, and
their correctness has not been rigorously investigated. In this paper we
rigorously prove correct the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), with our proof
giving insights into the protocol structure and its use of lower-level
abstractions. To this end, we first propose an abstract version of SCP that
uses as a black box Stellar's federated voting primitive (analogous to reliable
Byzantine broadcast), previously investigated by Garc\'ia-P\'erez and Gotsman.
The abstract consensus protocol highlights a modular structure in Stellar and
can be proved correct by reusing the previous results on federated voting.
However, it is unsuited for realistic implementations, since its processes
maintain infinite state. We thus establish a refinement between the abstract
protocol and the concrete SCP that uses only finite state, thereby carrying
over the result about the correctness of former to the latter. Our results help
establish the theoretical foundations of decentralised blockchains like Stellar
and gain confidence in their correctness.
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