The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is limited by its astronomical electricity consumption and outsized carbon footprint.
A nearly zero-energy alternative sounds too good to be true, but as School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) Professor Rachid Guerraoui explains, it all comes down to our understanding of what makes transactions secure.
To explain why the system developed in his Distributed Computing Lab (DCL) represents a paradigm shift in how we think about cryptocurrencies β and about digital trust in general β ProfessorΒ Rachid GuerraouiΒ uses a legal metaphor: all players in this new system are βinnocent until proven guilty.β
This is in contrast to the traditional Bitcoin model firstΒ described in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, which relies on solving a difficult problem called βconsensusβ to guarantee the security of transactions. In this model, everyone in a distributed system must agree on the validity of all transactions to prevent malicious players from cheating β for example, by spending the same digital tokens twice (double-spending). In order to prove their honesty and achieve consensus, players must execute complex β and energy-intensive β computing tasks that are then verified by the other players.
But in their new system, Guerraoui and his colleagues flip the assumption that all players are potential cheaters on its head.
βWe take a minimalist approach. We realize that players donβt need to reach consensus; they just need to prevent malicious behavior when it manifests,β he explains. βSo, we assume everyone is honest, and if players see someone trying to do something wrong, they ignore that player β and only that player.β
With the consensus requirement out of the way, the DCLβs new system, dubbed Byzantine Reliable Broadcast, can achieve safe cryptocurrency transactions on a large scale with an energetic cost of virtually zero β βroughly equivalent to that of exchanging emailsβ, Guerraoui says β and just a few grams of CO2 compared toΒ an estimated 300 kgΒ for a single Bitcoin transaction.
That could be a big advantage over Bitcoin, which has been reported to have a global electricity consumptionΒ approaching that of Austria, and a global carbon footprintΒ comparable to that of Denmark.
Communication is key
So, how can users be sure that cryptocurrency transactions are secure if they are not sure who the malicious players are? Guerraoui says: players just need to communicate with each other.
βIf a malicious player wants to make a payment, for example, this system would not allow anyone to accept money from that player until a randomly chosen sample has confirmed the player has not sent money to anyone else; otherwise, the payment will not be accepted,β he explains. βBasically, weβre saying that you only need to exchange information with a sample of players to implement a cryptocurrency.β
The central element of communicating, or broadcasting, information is what gives the Byzantine Reliable Broadcast system its name. After firstΒ publishingΒ the theoretical results behind the system earlier this year in the proceedings of the 2019 ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (ACM PODC), one of the two most prestigious conferences in the field, Guerraoui and his colleagues have recently publishedΒ a second paperΒ describing the implementation and scale-up of their algorithm.
For its description of the first scalable solution to a consensus alternative, the second DCL paper has already garnered interest from industry, and won the Best Paper Award at the fieldβs other top conference,Β DISC 2019Β (the 33rdΒ International Symposium on Distributed Computing). The award will be presented in Budapest, Hungary in mid-October.
From banking to bikeshares
In addition to its lower cost and energy expenditure, the Byzantine Reliable Broadcast system sacrifices nothing in terms of transaction security. While it has a narrower range of applications than Bitcoin β being suitable only for cryptocurrencies, and not for more complex transactions like smart contracts β the system can manage other forms of currency besides money.
βIt could be used for an abstract cryptocurrency for exchanging goods, like bikes in a bike-sharing program for example,β Guerraoui says.
He and his colleagues plan to release their new system as an open-source code for anyone to download and use by the end of 2020.
Learn more: EPFL researchers invent low-cost alternative to Bitcoin
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