Computer Science > Computer Science and Game Theory
[Submitted on 11 Mar 2019 (v1), last revised 18 Jul 2021 (this version, v4)]
Title:Weighted Voting on the Blockchain: Improving Consensus in Proof of Stake Protocols
View PDFAbstract:Proof of Stake (PoS) protocols rely on voting mechanisms to reach consensus on the current state. If an enhanced majority of staking nodes, also called validators, agree on a proposed block, then this block is appended to the blockchain. Yet, these protocols remain vulnerable to faults caused by validators who abstain either accidentally or maliciously. To protect against such faults while retaining the PoS selection and reward allocation schemes, we study weighted voting in validator committees. We formalize the block creation process and introduce validators' voting profiles which we update by a multiplicative weights algorithm relative to validators' voting behavior and aggregate blockchain rewards. Using this framework, we leverage weighted majority voting rules that optimize collective decision making to show, both numerically and analytically, that the consensus mechanism is more robust if validators' votes are appropriately scaled. We raise potential issues and limitations of weighted voting in trustless, decentralized networks and relate our results to the design of current PoS protocols.
Submission history
From: Stefanos Leonardos Mr. [view email][v1] Mon, 11 Mar 2019 10:59:43 UTC (66 KB)
[v2] Sun, 19 May 2019 12:10:39 UTC (66 KB)
[v3] Sat, 21 Mar 2020 10:59:45 UTC (269 KB)
[v4] Sun, 18 Jul 2021 13:12:17 UTC (269 KB)
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