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New Models for Consensus in the Blockchain Era

Series: Department Seminar

Speaker: Srivatsan Sridhar

Date/Time: Jan 07 11:00:00

Location: CSA Auditorium, (Room No. 104, Ground Floor)

Abstract:
The security of distributed systems often depends on the delay between one node sending a message and another node receiving and processing the message. How should we model this delay to prove the security of protocols? The commonly used bounded-delay model assumes that all messages are processed within a bounded delay. This neglects the fact that due to limited processing capacities, receiving many messages in a short time causes queuing delays. In this talk, I will discuss attacks on the consensus protocol powering major blockchains like Bitcoin and Cardano, exploiting queuing delays to overcome previously proven security bounds. Then, I will present a refined security analysis in a more realistic bounded-capacity model by using random walks and queues with adversarial arrivals. This talk is based on Link and Link

Speaker Bio:
Srivatsan Sridhar recently completed his PhD at Stanford University, advised by Professor David Tse. His current research interest is distributed protocols, with an emphasis on the security and scalability of consensus protocols in modern blockchains. His work addresses critical challenges such as network congestion, heterogeneous security requirements, and interoperability, with a strong emphasis on developing the right models to capture the unique demands of internet-scale blockchains. His research is complemented by internships at Protocol Labs, where he resolved key vulnerabilities in IPFS—the largest peer-to-peer filesystem—and at Mysten Labs, where he enhanced the Sui blockchains throughput using concurrent execution.

Host Faculty: Prof. Chaya Ganesh