Moonshot: Optimizing Chain-Based Rotating Leader BFT via Optimistic Proposals

Abstract

Existing chain-based rotating-leader BFT SMR protocols for the partially synchronous network model with constant commit latencies incur block periods of at least $2\hat{I}´$ (where $\hat{I}´$ is the message transmission latency). While a protocol with a block period of $\hat{I}´$ exists under the synchronous model, its commit latency is linear in the size of the system. To close this gap, we present the first chain-based BFT SMR protocols with $\hat{I}´$ delay between the proposals of consecutive honest leaders and commit latencies of $3\hat{I}´$. We present three protocols for the partially synchronous model under different notions of optimistic responsiveness, two of which implement pipelining. All of our protocols achieve reorg resilience and two have short view lengths; properties that many existing chain-based BFT SMR protocols lack. We present an evaluation of our protocols in a wide-area network wherein they demonstrate significant increases in throughput and reductions in latency compared to the state-of-the-art, Jolteon. Our results also demonstrate that techniques commonly employed to reduce communication complexity$\unicode{x2014}$such as vote-pipelining and the use of designated vote-aggregators$\unicode{x2014}$actually reduce practical performance in many settings.

21 pages, 9 figures. Corrections, improvements and clarifications to Commit Moonshot; improvements and clarifications to Pipelined Moonshot; model clarifications, new communication diagrams and updates to plots; moderation of performance claims due to small sample size; writing changes to improve readability; minor changes to summary of related work