Randomization in Byzantine Agreement

The topic of our research is to study how randomization is used to solve Byzantine Agreement problem in different computational models. Byzantine Agreement is a classic distributed computing problem, where processors try to agree on a value, but some of the processors try to disrupt the agreement or make sure that the algorithm never terminates. Byzantine Agreement problem can be solved in different computational models, e.g., partially asynchronous, asynchronous. Practical applications of Byzantine Agreement are clock synchronization problem (multiple machines trying to agree on what time it is right now) and blockchains (consensus algorithms for synchronizing the state of the blockchain database). We want to study how randomization is used to solve these problems and, as a final result, make a survey for these methods to further facilitate the research on consensus problem. To do so, we will study different methods for solving consensus, and possibly improve existing algorithms as a result.

Faculty Supervisor:

Faith Ellen

Student:

Partner:

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Technology; Information and Communications Technology; Finance and Insurance

University:

University of Toronto

Program: