An article on Fast Probabilistic Consensus for Coordicide activation in IOTA distributed ledger structure has appeared in Elsevier, the top analytics database. It was written by Dr. Serguei Popov and Dr. Bill Buchanan. Initially, the article was prepared for the January 2021 issue of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. Now the thesis is available through the Science Direct portal.
New dimension of Byzantine Fault Tolerance
According to the abstract for this sophisticated paper, this text describes the brand-new peer-to-peer protocol dubbed Fast Probabilistic Consensus Within Byzantine Infrastructures (FPC-BI).
The academic paper about IOTA's #FPC protocol, a key feature of #Coordicide, is now available on @ElsevierNews! By Dr. Serguei Popov and Dr. Bill Buchanan. Download it for free at https://t.co/YgKDfM5eWi#IOTA @billatnapier @mthcl_crypto pic.twitter.com/Ya9euqx9gN
— IOTA (@iotatoken) September 14, 2020
Like the rest of the papers that address the problems of "Byzantine Tolerance," the new article studies different strategies of attacks on nodes. Dr. Popov and Dr. Buchanan described two general approaches taken by hypothetical attackers: "cautious" and "berserk" strategies.
The protocol developed by scientists describes the way that cryptocurrencies systems may protect themselves from adversaries' activities. FPC is tested with both random numbers provided by a trusted source or created by nodes with a decentralized "random-number generator" protocol.
Also, this version of the protocol can initially turn a weak consensus into a strong one, which is crucial for blockchain systems' integrity and security.
From Pollen to Honey: paving the way to Coordicide
According to the IOTA team, this protocol will be used to perform Coordicide, a unique event that will eliminate the last centralized element in IOTA's Tangle data structure, the Coordinator.
Right now, IOTA works on the Pollen testnet stage of the Coordinator-less phase of project development. As covered by CryptoComes previously, the last version of Pollen, v0.2.4 was released on Sept. 3.
It includes new APIs for debugging, advanced database schemes and a new decentralized Random Number Generator (dRNG) scheme.