Decentralized Software Updates for Stake-Based Ledger Systems
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Dimitris Karakostas
Jun 8, 2021, 6:46:14 AM6/8/21
to decr...@googlegroups.com, Nikos Karagiannidis
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 8, 2021 14:00 UTC, Nikos Karayannidis from IOHK will present "Decentralized Software Updates for Stake-Based Ledger Systems".
Abstract: Software updates are a synonym to software evolution and thus are ubiquitous and inevitable to any blockchain platform. In this work, we propose a general framework for decentralized software updates in distributed ledger systems. Our framework is primarily focused on Proof of Stake blockchains and aims at providing a solid set of enhancements, covering the full spectrum of a blockchain system, in order to ensure a decentralized, but also secure update mechanism for a public ledger. We identify what are the critical decisions in the lifecycle of a software update and then propose a secure software update protocol that covers the full lifecycle of a software update from the ideation phase (the moment in which a change to the blockchain protocol is proposed) to the actual activation of the updated blockchain protocol, which enables decentralized decision making for all critical decisions. We propose a liquid democracy scheme based on experts for all the critical, but also deeply technical, decisions for software updates. We formally define what it means for a decentralized software update system to be secure and propose secure activation protocols with various trade-offs. We deal with the complexity of priorities, version dependencies, conflicts resolution and emergency handling for the activation of updates and propose an elegant design. We perform voting and activation threshold analysis, in order to achieve both properties of safety and liveness, which we define in detail. Our performance analysis has shown that our update protocol is both linearly scalable in the number of participants and does not impact negatively the performance of the underlying blockchain. Finally, we implement our ideas into a research prototype and propose an architecture for integrating an update mechanism within the Cardano node. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that aims at formalizing the notion of a decentralized secure update for a blockchain and also that takes such a holistic approach on software updates.
Join here: https://zoom.us/j/95803314057?pwd=NzB2bkY5YzdVMDlBSTluZ3RwUGhndz09
Password: x7Eg5a
More seminars: https://decrypto.org/seminar/
Abstract: Software updates are a synonym to software evolution and thus are ubiquitous and inevitable to any blockchain platform. In this work, we propose a general framework for decentralized software updates in distributed ledger systems. Our framework is primarily focused on Proof of Stake blockchains and aims at providing a solid set of enhancements, covering the full spectrum of a blockchain system, in order to ensure a decentralized, but also secure update mechanism for a public ledger. We identify what are the critical decisions in the lifecycle of a software update and then propose a secure software update protocol that covers the full lifecycle of a software update from the ideation phase (the moment in which a change to the blockchain protocol is proposed) to the actual activation of the updated blockchain protocol, which enables decentralized decision making for all critical decisions. We propose a liquid democracy scheme based on experts for all the critical, but also deeply technical, decisions for software updates. We formally define what it means for a decentralized software update system to be secure and propose secure activation protocols with various trade-offs. We deal with the complexity of priorities, version dependencies, conflicts resolution and emergency handling for the activation of updates and propose an elegant design. We perform voting and activation threshold analysis, in order to achieve both properties of safety and liveness, which we define in detail. Our performance analysis has shown that our update protocol is both linearly scalable in the number of participants and does not impact negatively the performance of the underlying blockchain. Finally, we implement our ideas into a research prototype and propose an architecture for integrating an update mechanism within the Cardano node. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that aims at formalizing the notion of a decentralized secure update for a blockchain and also that takes such a holistic approach on software updates.
Join here: https://zoom.us/j/95803314057?pwd=NzB2bkY5YzdVMDlBSTluZ3RwUGhndz09
Password: x7Eg5a
More seminars: https://decrypto.org/seminar/
dimit.karakostas
Jun 8, 2021, 6:48:34 AM6/8/21
to Decrypto Seminar
*correction, tomorrow is 9 June (the rest is the same)
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