A Secure Sharding Protocol for Open Blockchains

Explore a conference talk from CCS 2016 that presents a secure sharding protocol for open blockchains. Delve into the scalability challenges faced by existing blockchain protocols and discover innovative solutions proposed by researchers from the National University of Singapore. Learn about the straw-man solution for sharding, its analysis, and the introduction of a directory committee to address security concerns. Examine the process of generating epoch randomness and evaluate the performance of Elastico, the proposed protocol, in terms of scalability, bandwidth, and message efficiency. Gain insights into cutting-edge research aimed at improving the scalability and security of open blockchain systems.

Intro
The Blockchain Agreement Problem
Scalability Issue
Existing protocols are not scalable
Contributions
Problem Statement & Assumptions
Sharding: A Straw-man Solution
Analysis of The Straw-man Solution
Identity establishment
Assigning committees
Solution: Use directory committee
Security guarantees
How about Data Blocks?
Step 5: Generate epoch randomness
Evaluation
Elastico: Scalability
Elastico: Bandwidth & Messages
Conclusion