ZLB: A Blockchain to Tolerate Colluding Majorities

Abstract

In the general setting, consensus cannot be solved if an adversary controls a third of the system. Yet, blockchain participants typically reach consensus "eventually" despite an adversary controlling a minority of the system. Exceeding this $\frac{1}{3}$ cap is made possible by tolerating transient disagreements, where distinct participants select distinct blocks for the same index, before eventually agreeing to select the same block. Until now, no blockchain could tolerate an attacker controlling a majority of the system. In this paper, we present Zero-Loss Blockchain (ZLB), the first blockchain that tolerates an adversary controlling more than half of the system. ZLB is an open blockchain that combines recent theoretical advances in accountable Byzantine agreement to exclude undeniably deceitful replicas. progressively reduces the portion of deceitful replicas below $\frac{1}{3}$, and reaches consensus. Geo-distributed experiments show that ZLB outperforms HotStuff and is almost as fast as the scalable Red Belly Blockchain that cannot tolerate $n/3$ faults.