An Analysis of Multi-hop Iterative Approximate Byzantine Consensus with Local Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces Relay-IABC, a new algorithm for Byzantine consensus that uses multi-hop relayed messaging and cryptographic signatures to improve convergence speed and relax network requirements.

Contribution

The paper presents Relay-IABC, a novel Byzantine consensus algorithm leveraging relayed messaging and cryptography to enhance performance and flexibility.

Findings

Relay-IABC achieves faster convergence than traditional algorithms.

Cryptographic signatures enable relaxed network conditions.

Experimental results confirm theoretical advantages.

Abstract

Iterative Approximate Byzantine Consensus (IABC) is a fundamental problem of fault-tolerant distributed computing where machines seek to achieve approximate consensus to arbitrary exactness in the presence of Byzantine failures. We present a novel algorithm for this problem, named Relay-IABC, which relies on the usage of a multi-hop relayed messaging system and crytographically secure message signatures. The use of signatures and relays allows the strict necessary network conditions of traditional IABC algorithms to be circumvented. In addition, we show evidence that Relay-IABC achieves faster convergence than traditional algorithms even under these strict network conditions with both theoretical analysis and experimental results.