Constantine: A Scalable and Efficient BFT Architecture for Blockchains
Abstract
Due to the keen interest in bitcoins and blockchain applications, distributed applications with Byzantine safety and fault tolerance requirements have received additional attention. Algorithms such as Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) have been developed to handle consistency by capturing aspects of open systems. However, when scaling well with the considerable number of replicas, most of these PoW-based or PoS-based systems do not perform as much as conventional approaches that deal with replica consistency. Algorithms such as PBFT that are based on active replication can fit the blockchain, ensuring better replication consistency performance. Thus hybrid approaches like Tendermint or Hot Stuff were developed offering openess and performance. Although they achieve large numbers of replicas, these solutions rely on PoW or PoS algorithms, which makes the consensus among their replicas expensive. Projects like Hyperledger propose high-performance blockchains where traditional PBFT consensus is used without the need for PoW or PoS. However, PBFT algorithms, in consensus of their replicas, do not scale well due to quadratic costs (O (n 2)). Thus, in the literature, hierarchical structures have been proposed with the PBFT to deal with the increasing number of replicas. We, in this paper, propose a hierarchical architecture with a PBFT algorithm to deal with the highly adversarial model of the blockchain environment. Our solution has a linear cost consensus on the number of replicas.
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