StakeCube: Combining Sharding and Proof-of-Stake to build Fork-free\n Secure Permissionless Distributed Ledgers

Abstract

Our work focuses on the design of a scalable permissionless blockchain in the\nproof-of-stake setting. In particular, we use a distributed hash table as a\nbuilding block to set up randomized shards, and then leverage the sharded\narchitecture to validate blocks in an efficient manner. We combine verifiable\nByzantine agreements run by shards of stakeholders and a block validation\nprotocol to guarantee that forks occur with negligible probability. We impose\ninduced churn to make shards robust to eclipse attacks, and we rely on the UTXO\ncoin model to guarantee that any stakeholder action is securely verifiable by\nanyone. Our protocol works against adaptive adversary, and makes no synchrony\nassumption beyond what is required for the byzantine agreement.\n