In the high-stakes race to develop more scalable blockchains, some platforms (Cosmos, EOS, TRON, etc.) have adopted committee-based consensus protocols, whereby the blockchain's record-keeping rights are entrusted to a committee of elected block producers. In theory, the smaller the committee, the faster the blockchain can reach consensus and the more it can scale. What's less clear, is whether this mechanism ensures that honest committees can be consistently elected, given voters typically have limited information. Using EOS' Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) protocol as a backdrop, we show that identifying the optimal voting strategy is complex and practically out of reach. We empirically characterize some simpler (suboptimal) voting strategies that token holders resort to in practice and show that these nonetheless converge to optimality, exponentially quickly. This yields efficiency gains over other PoS protocols that rely on randomized block producer selection. Our results suggest that (elected) committee-based consensus, as implemented in DPoS, can be robust and efficient, despite its complexity.
翻译:在开发更可扩缩的链条的激烈竞赛中,一些平台(宇宙、OS、TRON等)已经通过了委员会协商一致协议,据此,块链的保存记录权被委托给一个当选的块块生产者委员会。理论上,委员会越小,块链就越能达成共识,其规模就越大。 更不明确的是,这一机制是否确保诚实的委员会能够一致选举,因为选民通常只有有限的信息。 使用EOS授权的控股证明(DPOS)协议作为背景,我们表明,确定最佳的投票战略是复杂而实际上遥不可及的。我们从经验上将一些简单的(次优)投票战略定性为象征性持有者在实践中所依靠的,并表明这些战略仍然与最佳性一致,快速地显示出它们能够比其他依靠随机化块生产者选择的POS协议产生效率收益。我们的结果表明,(当选的)委员会协商一致,在DPos(DPos)中实施,尽管其复杂,但能够保持稳健和高效。