Modeling and verifying the CKB blockchain consensus protocol

Abstract

The Nervos CKB (Common Knowledge Base) is a public permissionless blockchain designed for the Nervos ecosystem. The CKB consensus protocol is the key protocol of the Nervos CKB, which improves the limit of the consensus’s performance for Bitcoin. In this paper, we developed the formal model of the CKB consensus protocol using timed automata. Based on the model, we formally verified various important properties of the Nervos CKB to provide a sufficient trustworthiness assurance. Especially, the security of the Nervos CKB against the selfish mining attacks to the protocol was investigated.