Consensus in blockchains: Overview and recent results

Christian Cachin

11.22.24

Reaching consensus despite faulty or corrupted nodes is a central question in distributed computing; it has received renewed attention over the last years because of its importance for cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks. Modern consensus protocols in this space have relied on a number of different methods for the nodes to influence protocol decisions. Such assumptions include (1) traditional voting, where each node has one vote, (2) weighted voting, where voting power is proportional to stake in an underlying asset, and (3) proof-of-X, which demonstrates a cryptographically verifiable investment of a resource X, such as storage space, time waited, or computational work. Christian Cachin (Bern) gives an overview of blockchain consensus methods and then highlights recent work on constructing new consensus protocols and analyzing existing ones.

About the presenter

Christian is a professor of computer science at the University of Bern (Switzerland), where he has been leading the Cryptology and Data Security Research Group since 2019. He is an IACR Fellow, ACM Fellow, and IEEE Fellow, recipient of multiple IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, and has also served as the President of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) from 2014-2019. He has co-authored a textbook on distributed computing titled Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming. While at IBM Research he made essential contributions to the development of Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain platform aimed at business use.

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