## Consensus Lower Bounds via Uncommitted Configurations

In this series of three posts, we discuss two of the most important consensus lower bounds: Lamport, Fischer [1982]: any protocol solving consensus in the synchronous model that is resilient to $t$ crash failures must have an execution with at least $t+1$ rounds. Fischer, Lynch, and Patterson [1983, 1985]: any protocol solving consensus in the asynchronous model that is resilient to even one crash failure must have an infinite execution.... [Read More]

## Security proof for Nakamoto Consensus

Bitcoin’s underlying consensus protocol, now known as Nakamoto consensus, is an extremely simple and elegant solution to the Byzantine consensus problem. One may expect this simple protocol to come with a simple security proof. But that turns out not to be the case. The Bitcoin white paper did not provide a proof. Several academic papers (e.g. Garay, Kiayias, Leonardos, and Pass, Seeman, shelat and Kiffer, Rajaraman, shelat) later presented rigorous... [Read More]

## Authenticated Synchronous BFT

Different modeling assumptions under which we construct BFT protocols often make it hard to compare two protocols and understand their relative contributions. In this post we discuss synchronous protocols in the authenticated model (assuming a PKI). [Read More]