Lecture

Byzantine Quorums and Hyperledger Fabric

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In course

CS-451: Distributed algorithms

Computing is nowadays distributed over several machines, in a local IP-like network, a cloud or a P2P network. Failures are common and computations need to proceed despite partial failures of machines or communication links. This course will study the fo ...

Description

This lecture covers the basics of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and its application in Hyperledger Fabric. It discusses the challenges of achieving consensus in distributed systems, the concept of state-machine replication, and the evolution of blockchain technology from Bitcoin to Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. The lecture delves into the architecture of Hyperledger Fabric, the order-execute model, and the Mir-BFT protocol for total order broadcast. It also explores the performance evaluation of Mir-BFT in WAN settings and the key requirements for Hyperledger Fabric's design. The presentation concludes with insights on preventing transaction duplication, scalability, and the future prospects of Mir-BFT as a production-ready BFT library.

Instructor

Rachid Guerraoui

Rachid Guerraoui has been affiliated with Ecole des Mines of Paris, the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique of Saclay, Hewlett Packard Laboratories and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked in a variety of aspects of distributed computing, including distributed algorithms and distributed programming languages. He is most well known for his work on (e-)Transactions, epidemic information dissemination and indulgent algorithms. He co-authored a book on Transactional Systems (Hermes) and a book on reliable distributed programming (Springer). He was appointed program chair of ECOOP 1999, ACM Middleware 2001, IEEE SRDS 2002, DISC 2004 and ACM PODC 2010. His publications are available at http://lpdwww.epfl.ch/rachid/papers/generalPublis.html

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Computer engineering

Computer security: Blockchain

Related concepts (32)

Blockchain

A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it.

Ethereum

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-source software. Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin. Additional founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin. In 2014, development work began and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015.

Solana (blockchain platform)

Solana is a blockchain platform which uses a proof-of-stake mechanism to provide smart contract functionality. Its native cryptocurrency is SOL. Solana was launched in 2020 by Solana Labs, which was founded by Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal in 2018. The blockchain has experienced several major outages, was subjected to a hack, and a class action lawsuit was filed against the platform. Solana's total market cap was in January 2022. However, by the end of 2022, this had fallen to around $3 billion following the bankruptcy of FTX.

Consensus (computer science)

A fundamental problem in distributed computing and multi-agent systems is to achieve overall system reliability in the presence of a number of faulty processes. This often requires coordinating processes to reach consensus, or agree on some data value that is needed during computation. Example applications of consensus include agreeing on what transactions to commit to a database in which order, state machine replication, and atomic broadcasts.

Smart contract

A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objectives of smart contracts are the reduction of need for trusted intermediators, arbitration costs, and fraud losses, as well as the reduction of malicious and accidental exceptions. Smart contracts are commonly associated with cryptocurrencies, and the smart contracts introduced by Ethereum are generally considered a fundamental building block for decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT applications.

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