Episode 155: Testing PoW Consensus Algorithm Security with Ren Zhang from Nervos

In this week’s episode, we revisit the topic of consensus algorithms with Ren Zhang (https://twitter.com/nirenzang), a researchers at Nervos and previously at imec-COSIC (KU Leuven). We chat about an earlier work he did on evaluating PoW consensus protocols security and explore his more recent work on NC-Max - a consensus protocol that breaks the throughput limit and enables the full utilization of the nodes’ bandwidth in confirming transactions
Here are a few of the links we mention in the interview:
- Consensus Algorithms & HotStuff with Ittai Abraham (https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/127)
- Majority is not Enough:Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable (https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ie53/publications/btcProcFC.pdf)
- FruitChains: A Fair Blockchain (https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/916.pdf)
- RSK technology (https://www.rsk.co/)
- Subchains: A Technique to Scale Bitcoin and Improve the User Experience (https://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/resources/subchains.pdf)
- Lay Down the Common Metrics: Evaluating Proof-of-Work Consensus Protocols' Security (https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/publications/article-3005.pdf) by Ren Zhang & Bart Preneel
- NC-Max: Breaking the Throughput Limit of Nakamoto Consensus (https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1101.pdf) by Ren Zhang, Dingwei Zhang, Quake Wang, Jan Xie and Bart Preneel
- SquirRL (https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01798) - A recent paper extending the "Lay Down the Common Metrics" paper
- Markov decision process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process) on Wikipedia
- Monsters in the Mempool with Dan Robinson from Paradigm (https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/153)
- Prism: Deconstructing the Blockchain to Approach Physical Limits (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.08092.pdf)
- Alan Szepieniec on Hash Functions & Supersonic SNARKs (https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/105)
More on Nervos:
For the UTXO Programming Model of Nervos, the best starting point is Ren’s colleague Xuejie Xiao's blog (https://xuejie.space/2019_07_05_introduction_to_ckb_script_programming_validation_model/).
An explanation of Nervos DAO (https://xuejie.space/2019_07_05_introduction_to_ckb_script_programming_validation_model/)
An introduction of the Virtual Machine and smart contract support (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vezNBU5Isgg)
Thanks to our sponsor Least Authority (https://leastauthority.com/).
Least Authority is a security consulting company known for their dedication to pushing the limits on how to build privacy-respecting solutions. They are a team of security researchers, open source developers, privacy advocates, cryptographers who specialize in security audits, design specification reviews, and security-by-design.
Given that privacy is at the core of their work and mission, least authority recognizes the importance of privacy in DeFi and other decentralizing technologies and the role it plays in preserving balance of power. Least Authority is supporting this through a growing list of security reviews, building distributed systems and regular contributions to open source software projects.
To find out about their work, visit leastauthority.com (https://leastauthority.com/) to check out their security audit reports.
And get in touch at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) if you want to talk about the security of your DeFi project.
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In this week’s episode, we revisit the topic of consensus algorithms with Ren Zhang, a researchers at Nervos and previously at imec-COSIC (KU Leuven). We chat about an earlier work he did on evaluating PoW consensus protocols security and explore his more recent work on NC-Max - a consensus protocol that breaks the throughput limit and enables the full utilization of the nodes’ bandwidth in confirming transactions

Here are a few of the links we mention in the interview:

Consensus Algorithms & HotStuff with Ittai Abraham
Majority is not Enough:Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable
FruitChains: A Fair Blockchain
RSK technology
Subchains: A Technique to Scale Bitcoin and Improve the User Experience
Lay Down the Common Metrics: Evaluating Proof-of-Work Consensus Protocols' Security by Ren Zhang & Bart Preneel
NC-Max: Breaking the Throughput Limit of Nakamoto Consensus by Ren Zhang, Dingwei Zhang, Quake Wang, Jan Xie and Bart Preneel
SquirRL - A recent paper extending the "Lay Down the Common Metrics" paper
Markov decision process on Wikipedia
- Monsters in the Mempool with Dan Robinson from Paradigm
Prism: Deconstructing the Blockchain to Approach Physical Limits
Alan Szepieniec on Hash Functions & Supersonic SNARKs

More on Nervos:

For the UTXO Programming Model of Nervos, the best starting point is Ren’s colleague Xuejie Xiao's blog.

An explanation of Nervos DAO

An introduction of the Virtual Machine and smart contract support

Thanks to our sponsor Least Authority.

Least Authority is a security consulting company known for their dedication to pushing the limits on how to build privacy-respecting solutions. They are a team of security researchers, open source developers, privacy advocates, cryptographers who specialize in security audits, design specification reviews, and security-by-design.

Given that privacy is at the core of their work and mission, least authority recognizes the importance of privacy in DeFi and other decentralizing technologies and the role it plays in preserving balance of power. Least Authority is supporting this through a growing list of security reviews, building distributed systems and regular contributions to open source software projects.

To find out about their work, visit leastauthority.com to check out their security audit reports.

And get in touch at [email protected] if you want to talk about the security of your DeFi project.

If you like what we do:

Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm

Join us on Telegram -https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA

Catch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g

Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit -https://www.reddit.com/r/zkpodcast

Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A

Support our Gitcoin Grant -https://gitcoin.co/grants/329/zero-knowledge-podcast-2

Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge

Or directly here:

ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a

BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ