Data Structures and Protocols for Scalability and Security of Distributed Consensus

dc.contributor.advisorPapamanthou, Charalamposen_US
dc.contributor.authorSrinivasan, Shravanen_US
dc.contributor.departmentComputer Scienceen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2023-10-07T05:30:42Z
dc.date.available2023-10-07T05:30:42Z
dc.date.issued2023en_US
dc.description.abstractDistributed consensus is the problem of reaching an agreement among mutually distrusting nodes in the presence of faults. Despite tremendous progress in achieving internet-scale consensus, prior consensus protocols face scalability and security challenges. This dissertation proposes new authenticated data structures and protocols to improve the scalability (through stateless blockchains) and security (through support for more powerful network adversaries) of distributed consensus, respectively. In the first part, we present our Vector Commitment (VC) data structure, Hyperproofs, to improve scalability of blockchains. Our VC is the first construction that is efficiently maintainable (can update all proofs in sublinear time) and aggregatable (can combine multiple individual proofs into a single succinct proof). Hyperproofs also incentivize proof computation through a new property called unstealability, which allows a prover to cryptographically bind the proofs she computes irreversibly with her identity. Finally, we present schemes to succinctly prove and verify the (non-)membership of multiple elements in a cryptographic accumulator for applications in the distributed setting. In the second part, we present protocols to improve security of distributed consensus against powerful network adversaries that can delay or delete any message in the following settings: (1) We describe the first protocol to show that it is possible to achieve permissionless consensus even after relaxing the standard synchrony assumption. (2) We present the first expected constant-round Byzantine broadcast under a strongly adaptive and dishonest majority setting.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/dspace/vkmb-junj
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/30814
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledComputer scienceen_US
dc.titleData Structures and Protocols for Scalability and Security of Distributed Consensusen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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