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The Scalability of Trustless Trust

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Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 10958))

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Abstract

Permission-less blockchains can realise trustless trust, albeit at the cost of limiting the complexity of computation tasks. To explain the implications for scalability, we have implemented a trust model for smart contracts, described as agents in an open multi-agent system. Agent intentions are not necessarily known and autonomous agents have to be able to make decisions under risk. The ramifications of these general conditions for scalability are analysed for Ethereum and then generalised to other current and future platforms. Finally, mechanisms from the trust model are applied to a verifiable computation algorithm and implemented in the Ethereum blockchain. We show in experiments that the algorithm needs at most six semi-honest verifiers to detect false submission.

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Acknowledgement

The authors thank Babak Sadighi and Erik Rissanen for comments and discussions, and Daniel Gillblad for important support for Magnus Boman’s part of the project. Also, the authors thank Outlier Ventures Ltd. for partly funding Dominik Harz’ share of the project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IC3RE, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2RH, UK

    Dominik Harz

  2. RISE, Box 1263, 16429, Kista, Sweden

    Magnus Boman

  3. KTH/ICT/SCS, Electrum 229, 16440, Kista, Sweden

    Magnus Boman

Authors
  1. Dominik Harz
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  2. Magnus Boman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dominik Harz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Aviv Zohar

  2. Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Ittay Eyal

  3. University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Vanessa Teague

  4. Concordia University, Beaconsfield, QC, Canada

    Jeremy Clark

  5. Computer Science and Mathematics, Stirling University, Stirling, UK

    Andrea Bracciali

  6. Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Federico Pintore

  7. Department of Mathematics, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Massimiliano Sala

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© 2019 International Financial Cryptography Association

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Harz, D., Boman, M. (2019). The Scalability of Trustless Trust. In: Zohar, A., et al. Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10958. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58820-8_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-58820-8_19

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-58819-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-58820-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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