Bitcoin Meets Strong Consistency
Christian Decker, Jochen Seidel, Roger Wattenhofer
TL;DR
This paper introduces PeerCensus, a system built on Bitcoin that provides strong consistency and enables real-time payments, overcoming Bitcoin's inherent eventual consistency and slow confirmation times.
Contribution
The paper presents PeerCensus, a novel system that enhances Bitcoin with strong consistency and introduces Discoin, a Bitcoin variant supporting instant, irreversible transactions.
Findings
PeerCensus is shown to be secure with high probability.
Discoin enables real-time, irreversible payments.
The system improves transaction confirmation speed.
Abstract
The Bitcoin system only provides eventual consistency. For everyday life, the time to confirm a Bitcoin transaction is prohibitively slow. In this paper we propose a new system, built on the Bitcoin blockchain, which enables strong consistency. Our system, PeerCensus, acts as a certification authority, manages peer identities in a peer-to-peer network, and ultimately enhances Bitcoin and similar systems with strong consistency. Our extensive analysis shows that PeerCensus is in a secure state with high probability. We also show how Discoin, a Bitcoin variant that decouples block creation and transaction confirmation, can be built on top of PeerCensus, enabling real-time payments. Unlike Bitcoin, once transactions in Discoin are committed, they stay committed.
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Taxonomy
TopicsBlockchain Technology Applications and Security · Distributed systems and fault tolerance · Cryptography and Data Security