Alpenglow: A New Consensus for Solana by Roger Wattenhofer, Prof. at ETH Zurich and head of research at Anza
Abstract:
In this paper we describe and analyze Alpenglow, a consensus protocol tailored for a global high-performance proof-of-stake blockchain.
The voting component Votor finalizes blocks in a single round of voting if 80% of the stake is participating, and in two rounds if only 60% of the stake is responsive. These voting modes are performed concurrently, such that finalization takes min(δ80%, 2δ60%) time after a block has been distributed.
The fast block distribution component Rotor is based on erasure coding. Rotor utilizes the bandwidth of participating nodes proportionally to their stake, alleviating the leader bottleneck for high throughput. As a result, total available bandwidth is used asymptotically optimally.
Alpenglow features a distinctive “20+20” resilience, wherein the protocol can tolerate harsh network conditions and an adversary controlling 20% of the stake. An additional 20% of the stake can be offline if the network assumptions are stronger.
Speaker: Roger Wattenhofer, Prof. at ETH and head of research at Anza
Bio:
Roger Wattenhofer is head of research at Anza, the leading Solana-focused software development firm. His is also a full professor at the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He received his doctorate in Computer Science from ETH Zurich. Previously, he worked multiple years at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Roger Wattenhofer’s research interests include a variety of algorithmic and systems aspects in computer science and information technology, currently mostly machine learning, distributed systems, and theory of networks. He publishes in different communities: distributed computing (e.g., PODC, SPAA, DISC), networking and systems (e.g., SIGCOMM, SenSys, IPSN, OSDI, MobiCom), algorithmic theory (e.g., STOC, FOCS, SODA, ICALP), and machine learning (e.g., ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, ACL, AAAI). His work received multiple awards, e.g. the Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing for his work in Distributed Approximation. He published the book “Blockchain Science: Distributed Ledger Technology“, which has been translated to Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.
Check for the blog and white paper: https://www.anza.xyz/blog/alpenglow-a-new-consensus-for-solana