Vault: Fast Bootstrapping for the Algorand Cryptocurrency.

Derek Leung, Adam Suhl, Yossi Gilad, Nickolai Zeldovich

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Decentralized cryptocurrencies rely on participants to keep track of the state of the system in order to verify new transactions. As the number of users and transactions grows, this requirement becomes a significant burden, requiring users to download, verify, and store a large amount of data to participate.

Vault is a new cryptocurrency design based on Algorand that minimizes these storage and bootstrapping costs for participants. Vault’s design is based on Algorand’s proof-of-stake consensus protocol and uses several techniques to achieve its goals. First, Vault decouples the storage of recent transactions from the storage of account balances, which enables Vault to delete old account state. Second, Vault allows sharding state across participants in a way that preserves strong security guarantees. Finally, Vault introduces the notion of stamping certificates, which allow a new client to catch up securely and efficiently in a proof-of-stake system without having to verify every single block.

Experiments with a prototype implementation of Vault’s data structures show that Vault’s design reduces the bandwidth cost of joining the network as a full client by 99.7% compared to Bitcoin and 90.5% compared to Ethereum when downloading a ledger containing 500 million transactions.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNetwork and Distributed Systems Security (NDSS) Symposium 2019
StatePublished - 2019
EventNetwork and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2019 - Catamaran Resort Hotel & Spa, San Diego, United States
Duration: 24 Feb 201927 Feb 2019
https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss2019

Conference

ConferenceNetwork and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego
Period24/02/1927/02/19
Internet address

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