Proof of Stack Consensus for Blockchain Networks

Abstract

The implementations for decentralized consensus within Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) are varied and many, but Blockchain, the underpinning technology underneath Bitcoin has witnessed revolutionary use case success. Although blockchain emerged in the Internet commerce sector as an immutable and decentralized ledger system, it can now be seen as a framework for autonomous decentralized data processing which enforces a flat and open-access network. The primary security threat in Blockchain would be a compromise or fallacy in the Consensus mechanism. The Proof of concept (PoX) approach used in Blockchains has elegantly emulated the leader-election function required in a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocol to simulate the block proposal process. Proof of work (PoW), the consensus mechanism that the Bitcoin protocol employed paved the way for blockchain as a viable DLT for commerce on the internet. Many “alt-coins” subsequently came up, however PoW has saturated with the explosion of popularity of the crypto currency and other alt-coins have achieved sub-optimal solutions. There is the looming “51% attack” for resource pricing algorithms and various other attacks such as Bribe attacks, Sybil attacks and the Nothing-at-stake attack for the other alternate consensus mechanisms. The novel PoStack algorithm is a gamification of the node mining process, which enforces a simple notion: a node’s chance of mining crypto currency is proportional to its belief in a node that no one else believes in. The protocol has modest computational and financial needs, which reduces the barrier to entry.