Fast asynchronous byzantine agreement with optimal resilience

Ran Canetti, Tal Rabin

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

221 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Byzantine Agreement problem is one of the most fundamental problems in the field of distributed computing. However, despite extensive research, a few important questions have remained open. The resilience of a protocol is the maximum number of faults in the presence of which the protocol meets its specification. It is known that no BA protocol for n players (either synchronous or asynchronous) can be [n/3]1-resilient. The only known asynchronous ([n/3]1 - l)- resilient BA protocol runs in expected exponential time A long standing open question is whether there exists a fast asynchronous ([n/3]1 - 1)-resilient BA protocol. We answer this question in the affirmative. We consider a completely asynchronous network of n players, in which every two players are connected via a private channel. Furthermore, we let the faulty players have unlimited computational power. In this setting, we describe an ( [n/3]1 - I)-resilient Byzantine Agreement protocol. With overwhelming probability all the non-faulty players complete the execution of the protocol. Conditioned on the event that all the non-faulty players have completed the execution of the protocol, they do so in constant expected time. Our construction employs an ([n/3]1 - 1)-resilient Asynchronous Verifiable Secret Sharing (AVSS) scheme. No ([n/3]1 - 1)-resilient AVSS scheme was previously known. Our AVSS scheme employs new asynchronous tools which are of independent interest.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 25th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 1993
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages42-51
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)0897915917
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 1993
Externally publishedYes
Event25th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 1993 - San Diego, United States
Duration: 16 May 199318 May 1993

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing
VolumePart F129585
ISSN (Print)0737-8017

Conference

Conference25th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 1993
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego
Period16/05/9318/05/93

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