PoW-based distributed cryptography with no trusted setup

Abstract

Motivated by the recent success of Bitcoin we study the question of constructing distributed cryptographic protocols in a fully peerto- peer scenario under the assumption that the adversary has limited computing power and there is no trusted setup (like PKI, or an unpredictable beacon). We propose a formal model for this scenario and then we construct a broadcast protocol in it. This protocol is secure under the assumption that the honest parties have computing power that is some non-negligible fraction of computing power of the adversary (this fraction can be small, in particular it can be much less than 1/2), and a (rough) total bound on the computing power in the system is known. Using our broadcast protocol we construct a protocol for simulating any trusted functionality. A simple application of the broadcast protocol is also a scheme for generating an unpredictable beacon (that can later serve, e.g., as a genesis block for a new cryptocurrency). Under a stronger assumption that the majority of computing power is controlled by the honest parties we construct a protocol for simulating any trusted functionality with guaranteed termination (i.e. that cannot be interrupted by the adversary). This could in principle be used as a provably-secure substitute of the blockchain technology used in the cryptocurrencies. Our main tool for verifying the computing power of the parties are the Proofs of Work (Dwork and Naor, CRYPTO 92). Our broadcast protocol is built on top of the classical protocol of Dolev and Strong (SIAM J. on Comp. 1983).