Scaling Blockchains: Can Committee-Based Consensus Help?

Alon Benhaim (), Brett H. Falk () and Gerry Tsoukalas ()
Additional contact information
Alon Benhaim: Department of Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Brett H. Falk: Computer and Information Science Department, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Gerry Tsoukalas: Questrom School of Business, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215; IMD, CH-1001 Lausanne, Switzerland

Management Science, 2023, vol. 69, issue 11, 6525-6539

Abstract: In the high-stakes race for scalability, some blockchains have turned to committee-based consensus (CBC), whereby the chain’s recordkeeping rights are entrusted to a committee of block producers elected via approval voting . Smaller committees boost speed and scalability but can compromise security when voters have limited information. In this environment, voting strategies are naturally nonlinear, and equilibria can become intractable. Despite this, we show that elections converge to optimality asymptotically (in voter numbers), exponentially quickly, and under relatively weak informational requirements. Compared to popular stake-weighted lottery and single-vote protocols used in practice, we find that CBC, when paired with approval voting, can offer meaningful efficiency and robustness gains if enough voters are engaged.

Keywords: approval voting; blockchain; consensus protocols; decentralized governance; stake-weighted voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.03177 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:11:p:6525-6539

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().