Regulatable and Hardware-Based Proof of Stake to Approach Nothing at Stake and Long Range Attacks

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

5 Scopus Citations
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Author(s)

  • Xiaoqin Feng
  • Jianfeng Ma
  • Yinbin Miao
  • Ximeng Liu
  • Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

Related Research Unit(s)

Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2114-2125
Journal / PublicationIEEE Transactions on Services Computing
Volume16
Issue number3
Online published25 Aug 2022
Publication statusPublished - May 2023

Abstract

Proof of Stake powered blockchains account for general trends in existing consensus mechanisms. However, existing PoS protocols are vulnerable to the nothing at stake and long range attacks, which allow attackers to gain unfair shares based on costless simulations and malicious sale information. In a decentralized setting, these securities are limited as each node is unregulated. To address these problems, we introduce a proof-of-hardware-stake (PohS) consensus mechanism and a regulatory mechanism based on a consortium blockchain. Our approach is implemented in a sharding blockchain to scale the consensus. Since any node on the network cannot fake information, the blockchain trustless won not be decreased by the reliance on a consortium blockchain. Under the competing rule of PohS consensus mechanism, adversaries can issue the long range attack with at most 10-3 probability. The regulatory mechanism implements the regulation of costless simulations at the nothing stake attack. We prove that our design is secure (e.g., 51% and selfish mining) against adversarial stakes less than 51% by adopting the square root of stakes for competition. Our proof also highlights the security of double-spending and long range attacks. Simulations are conducted to compare the efficiency of our approach with Ethereum and Ouroboros. © 2022 IEEE.

Research Area(s)

  • Proof of stake, blockchain regulation, nothing at stake, long range attack, 51% attack

Citation Format(s)

Regulatable and Hardware-Based Proof of Stake to Approach Nothing at Stake and Long Range Attacks. / Feng, Xiaoqin; Ma, Jianfeng; Miao, Yinbin et al.
In: IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Vol. 16, No. 3, 05.2023, p. 2114-2125.

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review