Goldfish: No More Attacks on Ethereum?!
摘要
The LMD GHOST consensus protocol is a critical but brittle component of proof-of-stake Ethereum. We propose Goldfish, a new consensus protocol that satisfies key properties required of a drop-in replacement: Goldfish is secure in the sleepy model, assuming an honest majority of validators. Goldfish is reorg resilient so that honestly produced blocks are guaranteed inclusion in the ledger, and it supports fast confirmation with expected confirmation latency independent of the desired security level. Subsampling validators can improve the communication efficiency of Goldfish, and Goldfish is composable with finality/accountability gadgets. Crucially, Goldfish is structurally similar to LMD GHOST, providing a credible path to adoption in Ethereum. Attacks on LMD GHOST exploit lack of coordination among honest validators, typically provided by a locking mechanism in classical BFT protocols. However, locking requires votes from a quorum of all participants and is not compatible with fluctuating participation. Goldfish is powered by a novel coordination mechanism to synchronize the honest validators’ actions.