Proof of Luck: an Efficient Blockchain Consensus Protocol
This addresses energy waste and fairness problems in blockchain systems for decentralized applications, though it relies on TEEs and may be incremental in combining existing ideas.
The paper tackles the inefficiency and centralization issues in blockchain consensus by introducing a proof of luck protocol using trusted execution environments (TEEs), which achieves low-latency transaction validation, deterministic confirmation time, negligible energy consumption, and equitable mining distribution.
In the paper, we present designs for multiple blockchain consensus primitives and a novel blockchain system, all based on the use of trusted execution environments (TEEs), such as Intel SGX-enabled CPUs. First, we show how using TEEs for existing proof of work schemes can make mining equitably distributed by preventing the use of ASICs. Next, we extend the design with proof of time and proof of ownership consensus primitives to make mining energy- and time-efficient. Further improving on these designs, we present a blockchain using a proof of luck consensus protocol. Our proof of luck blockchain uses a TEE platform's random number generation to choose a consensus leader, which offers low-latency transaction validation, deterministic confirmation time, negligible energy consumption, and equitably distributed mining. Lastly, we discuss a potential protection against up to a constant number of compromised TEEs.