Lemonshark: Asynchronous DAG-BFT With Early Finality

TL;DR

Lemonshark is an asynchronous DAG-BFT protocol that achieves early transaction finality, reducing latency significantly by reinterpreting the DAG at a transactional level.

Contribution

It introduces a novel reinterpretation of the DAG at the transactional level, allowing early finality without sacrificing correctness.

Findings

Lemonshark reduces latency by up to 65% compared to previous protocols.

It enables nodes to finalize transactions before official commitment.

The protocol maintains safety despite early finality.

Abstract

DAG-Rider popularized a new paradigm of DAG-BFT protocols, separating dissemination from consensus: all nodes disseminate transactions as blocks that reference previously known blocks, while consensus is reached by electing certain blocks as leaders. This design yields high throughput but confers optimal latency only to leader blocks; non-leader blocks cannot be committed independently. We present Lemonshark, an asynchronous DAG-BFT protocol that reinterprets the DAG at a transactional level and identifies conditions where commitment is sufficient -- but not necessary -- for safe results, enabling nodes to finalize transactions before official commitment, without compromising correctness. Compared to the state-of-the-art asynchronous BFT protocol, Lemonshark reduces latency by up to 65\%.