Introduction
We give the first optimal randomized solution to the long standing problem of Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement. See https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.01332
Abstract
We provide a new protocol for Validated Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement. Validated (multi-valued) Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement is a key building block in constructing Atomic Broadcast and fault-tolerant state machine replication in the asynchronous setting. Our protocol can withstand the optimal number n/3 of Byzantine failures and reaches agreement in the asymptotically optimal expected O(1) running time. Honest parties in our protocol send only an expected O(n2) messages where each message contains a value and a constant number of signatures. Hence our total expected communication is O(n2) words. The best previous result of Cachin et al. from 2001 solves Validated Byzantine Agreement with optimal resilience and O(1) expected time but with O(n3) expected word communication. Our work addresses an open question of Cachin et al. from 2001 and improves the expected word communication from O(n3) to the asymptotically optimal O(n2).