Paper 2023/1364

Convex Consensus with Asynchronous Fallback

Abstract

Convex Consensus (CC) allows a set of parties to agree on a value $v$ inside the convex hull of their inputs with respect to a predefined abstract convexity notion, even in the presence of byzantine parties. In this work, we focus on achieving CC in the best-of-both-worlds paradigm, i.e., simultaneously tolerating at most $$ corruptions if communication is synchronous, and at most $$ corruptions if it is asynchronous. Our protocol is randomized, which is a requirement under asynchrony, and we prove that it achieves optimal resilience. In the process, we introduce communication primitives tailored to the network-agnostic model. These are a deterministic primitive allowing parties to obtain intersecting views (Gather), and a randomized primitive leading to identical views (Agreement on a Core-Set). Our primitives provide stronger guarantees than previous counterparts, making them of independent interest.