SmartCast: An incentive compatible consensus protocol using smart contracts

Abhiram Kothapalli, Andrew Miller, Nikita Borisov

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Motivated by the desire for high-throughput public databases (i.e., “blockchains”), we design incentive compatible protocols that run “off-chain”, but rely on an existing cryptocurrency to implement a reward and/or punishment mechanism. Our protocols are incentive compatible in the sense that behaving honestly is a weak Nash equilibrium, even in spite of potentially malicious behavior from a small fraction of the participants (i.e., the BAR model from Clement et al. [7]). To show the feasibility of our approach, we build a prototype implementation, called SmartCast, comprising an Ethereum smart contract, and an off-chain consensus protocol based on Dolev-Strong [10]. SmartCast also includes a “marketplace” smart contract that randomly assigns workers to protocol instances. We evaluate the communication costs of our system, as well as the “gas” transaction costs that are involved in running the Ethereum smart contract.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationFinancial Cryptography and Data Security - FC 2017 International Workshops, WAHC, BITCOIN, VOTING, WTSC, and TA, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsAndrew Miller, Michael Brenner, Kurt Rohloff, Joseph Bonneau, Vanessa Teague, Andrea Bracciali, Massimiliano Sala, Federico Pintore, Markus Jakobsson, Peter Y.A. Ryan
PublisherSpringer
Pages536-552
Number of pages17
ISBN (Print)9783319702773
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
Event21st International Workshops on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2017 held in conjuction with 5th Workshop on Encrypted Computing and Applied Homomorphic Cryptography, WAHC 2017, 4th Workshop on Bitcoin and Blockchain Research, BITCOIN 2017, 2nd Workshop on Advances in Secure Electronic Voting Schemes, VOTING 2017, 1st Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts, WTSC 2017 and 1st Workshop on Targeted Attacks, TA 2017 - Sliema, Malta
Duration: Apr 7 2017Apr 7 2017

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume10323 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other21st International Workshops on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2017 held in conjuction with 5th Workshop on Encrypted Computing and Applied Homomorphic Cryptography, WAHC 2017, 4th Workshop on Bitcoin and Blockchain Research, BITCOIN 2017, 2nd Workshop on Advances in Secure Electronic Voting Schemes, VOTING 2017, 1st Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts, WTSC 2017 and 1st Workshop on Targeted Attacks, TA 2017
Country/TerritoryMalta
CitySliema
Period4/7/174/7/17

Keywords

  • Atomic broadcast
  • Ethereum
  • Game theory
  • Smart contracts
  • TRB

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

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