Dave: a decentralized, secure, and lively fraud-proof algorithm

TL;DR

This paper presents Dave, a decentralized fraud-proof algorithm that ensures security and liveness with minimal resource requirements, making it highly inclusive and efficient for blockchain consensus.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel fraud-proof algorithm that achieves logarithmic resource growth and delay, eliminating the need for high bonds and enabling more inclusive participation.

Findings

Dispute resolution completes in 2-5 challenge periods.

Censorship requires more than one challenge period to break consensus.

Engagement costs in disputes are minimal.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new fraud-proof algorithm that offers an unprecedented combination of decentralization, security, and liveness. The resources that must be mobilized by an honest participant to defeat an adversary grow only logarithmically with what the adversary ultimately loses. As a consequence, there is no need to introduce high bonds that prevent an adversary from creating too many Sybils. This makes the system very inclusive and frees participants from having to pool resources among themselves to engage the protocol. Finally, the maximum delay to finalization also grows only logarithmically with total adversarial expenditure, with the smallest multiplicative factor to date. In summary: the entire dispute completes in 2--5 challenge periods, the only way to break consensus is to censor the honest party for more than one challenge period, and the costs of engaging in the dispute are minimal.