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  4. Quantifying Liveness and Safety of Avalanche’s Snowball
 
conference paper

Quantifying Liveness and Safety of Avalanche’s Snowball

Kniep, Quentin
•
Laval, Maxime
•
Sliwinski, Jakub
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Garcia-Alfaro, Joaquin
•
Barker, Ken
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April 2, 2025
Computer Security. ESORICS 2024 International Workshops - DPM, CBT, and CyberICPS, Bydgoszcz, 2024, Revised Selected Papers
19th International Workshop on Data Privacy Management, International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology and Workshop on the Security of Industrial Control Systems and of Cyber-Physical Systems which were held in conjunction with the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security

This work examines the resilience properties of the Snowball and Avalanche protocols that underlie the popular Avalanche blockchain. We experimentally quantify the resilience of Snowball using a simulation implemented in Rust, where the adversary strategically rebalances the network to delay termination. We show that in a network of n nodes of equal stake, the adversary is able to break liveness when controlling Ω(n) nodes. Specifically, for n=2000, a simple adversary controlling 5.2% of stake can successfully attack liveness. When the adversary is given additional information about the state of the network (without any communication or other advantages), the stake needed for a successful attack is as little as 2.8%. We show that the adversary can break safety in time exponentially dependent on their stake, and inversely linearly related to the size of the network, e.g. in 265 rounds in expectation when the adversary controls 25% of a network of 3000. We conclude that Snowball and Avalanche are akin to Byzantine reliable broadcast protocols as opposed to consensus.

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Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1007/978-3-031-82349-7_18
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-105002474418

Author(s)
Kniep, Quentin

ETH Zürich

Laval, Maxime

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Sliwinski, Jakub

ETH Zürich

Wattenhofer, Roger

ETH Zürich

Editors
Garcia-Alfaro, Joaquin
•
Barker, Ken
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Navarro-Arribas, Guillermo
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Pérez-Solà, Cristina
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Delgado-Segura, Sergi
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Katsikas, Sokratis
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Cuppens, Frédéric
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Lambrinoudakis, Costas
•
Cuppens-Boulahia, Nora
•
Pawlicki, Marek
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Date Issued

2025-04-02

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH

Published in
Computer Security. ESORICS 2024 International Workshops - DPM, CBT, and CyberICPS, Bydgoszcz, 2024, Revised Selected Papers
ISBN of the book

978-3-031-82349-7

Series title/Series vol.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 15263

ISSN (of the series)

1611-3349

0302-9743

Start page

260

End page

275

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
EPFL  
Event nameEvent acronymEvent placeEvent date
19th International Workshop on Data Privacy Management, International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology and Workshop on the Security of Industrial Control Systems and of Cyber-Physical Systems which were held in conjunction with the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security

ESORICS 2024

Bydgoszcz, Poland

2024-09-16 - 2024-09-20

Available on Infoscience
May 5, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/249719
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