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International Conference on Networked Systems

NETYS 2019: Networked Systems pp 166–182Cite as

Dissecting Tendermint

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCCN,volume 11704))

Abstract

In this paper we analyze Tendermint, proposed in [12], one of the most popular blockchains based on PBFT Consensus. Our methodology consists in identifying the algorithmic principles of Tendermint necessary for a specific system model. The current paper dissects Tendermint under two communication models: synchronous and eventually synchronous ones. This methodology allowed to identify bugs in preliminary versions of the protocol and to prove its correctness under the most adversarial conditions: an eventually synchronous communication model under Byzantine faults. The message complexity of Tendermint is \(O(n^3)\).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Since there are \(3f+1\) validators, there cannot be two different values that collect \(2f+1\) distinct votes in the same epoch.

  2. 2.

    validValue was not present in the previous version of Tendermint [26], that was suffering from the Live Lock bug [1].

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the reviewers of NETYS 2019 for their insightful comments. The authors also thank Zaynah Dargaye for numerous discussions, and in particular for the consistency of this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEA LIST, PC 174, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou, Antonella Del Pozzo & Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni

  2. Sorbonne Université, CNRS, LIP6, 75005, Paris, France

    Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou & Maria Potop-Butucaru

Authors
  1. Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou
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  2. Antonella Del Pozzo
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  3. Maria Potop-Butucaru
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  4. Sara Tucci-Piergiovanni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yackolley Amoussou-Guenou .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Uppsala Län, Sweden

    Mohamed Faouzi Atig

  2. Augusta University, Augusta, GA, USA

    Alexander A. Schwarzmann

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Amoussou-Guenou, Y., Del Pozzo, A., Potop-Butucaru, M., Tucci-Piergiovanni, S. (2019). Dissecting Tendermint. In: Atig, M., Schwarzmann, A. (eds) Networked Systems. NETYS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11704. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31277-0_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31277-0_11

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31277-0

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