Performance of EdDSA and BLS Signatures in Committee-Based Consensus

TL;DR

This paper compares the performance of EdDSA and BLS signatures in geo-distributed committee-based consensus, revealing deployment size-dependent preferences and introducing a novel BLS verification method.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale benchmark comparison of EdDSA and BLS signatures in distributed consensus and proposes a new BLS verification technique.

Findings

Small deployments benefit from BLS signatures due to lower storage costs.

Larger deployments perform better with EdDSA signatures for higher efficiency.

Introduces a novel method for verifying BLS multi-signed certificates.

Abstract

We present the first performance comparison of EdDSA and BLS signatures in committee-based consensus protocols through large-scale geo-distributed benchmarks. Contrary to popular beliefs, we find that small deployments (less than 40 validators) can benefit from the small storage footprint of BLS multi-signatures while larger deployments should favor EdDSA to improve performance. As an independent contribution, we present a novel way for committee-based consensus protocols to verify BLS multi-signed certificates by manipulating the aggregated public key using pre-computed values.