This paper presents a novel leaderless protocol (FPC-BI: Fast Probabilistic Consensus within Byzantine Infrastructures) with a low communicational complexity and which allows a set of nodes to come to a consensus on a value of a single bit. The paper makes the assumption that part of the nodes are , and are thus controlled by an adversary who intends to either delay the consensus, or break it. This defines that at least a couple of honest nodes come to different conclusions. We prove that, nevertheless, the protocol works with high probability when its parameters are suitably chosen. Along this the paper also provides explicit estimates on the probability that the protocol finalizes in the consensus state in a given time. This protocol could be applied to reaching consensus in decentralized cryptocurrency systems. A special feature of it is that it makes use of a sequence of random numbers which are either provided by a trusted source or generated by the nodes themselves using some decentralized random number generating protocol. This increases the overall trustworthiness of the infrastructure. A core contribution of the paper is that it uses a consensus to obtain a consensus on the value of a bit, and which can relate to the validity of a transaction.
@cite_26: We consider distributed plurality consensus in a complete graph of size @math with @math initial opinions. We design an efficient and simple protocol in the asynchronous communication model that ensures that all nodes eventually agree on the initially most frequent opinion. In this model, each node is equipped with a random Poisson clock with parameter @math . Whenever a node's clock ticks, it samples some neighbors, uniformly at random and with replacement, and adjusts its opinion according to the sample. A prominent example is the so-called two-choices algorithm in the synchronous model, where in each round, every node chooses two neighbors uniformly at random, and if the two sampled opinions coincide, then that opinion is adopted. This protocol is very efficient and well-studied when @math . If @math for some small @math , we show that it converges to the initial plurality opinion within @math rounds, w.h.p., as long as the initial difference between the largest and second largest opinion is @math . On the other side, we show that there are cases in which @math rounds are needed, w.h.p. One can beat this lower bound in the synchronous model by combining the two-choices protocol with randomized broadcasting. Our main contribution is a non-trivial adaptation of this approach to the asynchronous model. If the support of the most frequent opinion is at least @math times that of the second-most frequent one and @math , then our protocol achieves the best possible run time of @math , w.h.p. We relax full synchronicity by allowing @math nodes to be poorly synchronized, and the well synchronized nodes are only required to be within a certain time difference from one another. We enforce this synchronicity by introducing a novel gadget into the protocol.
@cite_7: 
@cite_8: Distributed voting is a fundamental topic in distributed computing. In the standard model of pull voting, at each step every vertex chooses a neighbour uniformly at random and adopts its opinion. The voting is completed when all vertices hold the same opinion. In the simplest case, each vertex initially holds one of two different opinions. This partitions the vertices into arbitrary sets A and B. For many graphs, including regular graphs and irrespective of their expansion properties, if both A and B are sufficiently large sets, then pull voting requires @math expected steps, where n is the number of vertices of the graph. In this paper we consider a related class of voting processes based on sampling two opinions. In the simplest case, every vertex v chooses two random neighbours at each step. If both these neighbours have the same opinion, then v adopts this opinion. Otherwise, v keeps its own opinion. Let G be a connected graph with n vertices and m edges. Let P be the transition matrix of a simple random walk on G with second largest eigenvalue @math . We show that if the initial imbalance in degree between the two opinions satisfies @math , then with high probability voting completes in @math steps, and the opinion with the larger initial degree wins. The condition that @math , or only a bound on the conductance of the graph is known, the sampling process can be modified so that voting still provably completes in @math steps with high probability. The modification uses two sampling based on probing to a fixed depth @math from any vertex. In its most general form our voting process allows vertices to bias their sampling of opinions among their neighbours to achieve a desired outcome. This is done by allocating weights to edges.
@cite_9: 
@cite_19: In this paper, we consider lightweight decentralised algorithms for achieving consensus in distributed systems. Each member of a distributed group has a private value from a fixed set consisting of, say, two elements, and the goal is for all members to reach consensus on the majority value. We explore variants of the voter model applied to this problem. In the voter model, each node polls a randomly chosen group member and adopts its value. The process is repeated until consensus is reached. We generalise this so that each member polls a (deterministic or random) number of other group members and changes opinion only if a suitably defined super-majority has a different opinion. We show that this modification greatly speeds up the convergence of the algorithm, as well as substantially reducing the probability of it reaching consensus on the incorrect value.
@cite_5: We consider the following distributed consensus problem: Each node in a complete communication network of size n initially holds an opinion, which is chosen arbitrarily from a finite set Σ. The system must converge toward a consensus state in which all, or almost all nodes, hold the same opinion. Moreover, this opinion should be valid, i.e., it should be one among those initially present in the system. This condition should be met even in the presence of a malicious adversary who can modify the opinions of a bounded subset of nodes, adaptively chosen in every round. We consider the 3-majority dynamics: At every round, every node pulls the opinion from three random neighbors and sets his new opinion to the majority one (ties are broken arbitrarily). Let k be the number of valid opinions. We show that, if k ≤ nα, where α is a suitable positive constant, the 3-majority dynamics converges in time polynomial in k and log n with high probability even in the presence of an adversary who can affect up to o([EQUATION]) nodes at each round. Previously, the convergence of the 3-majority protocol was known for |Σ| = 2 only, with an argument that is robust to adversarial errors. On the other hand, no anonymous, uniform-gossip protocol that is robust to adversarial errors was known for |Σ| > 2.
@cite_13: Motivated by applications in blockchains and sensor networks, we consider a model of @math nodes trying to reach consensus on their majority bit. Each node @math is assigned a bit at time zero, and is a finite automaton with @math bits of memory (i.e., @math states) and a Poisson clock. When the clock of @math rings, @math can choose to communicate, and is then matched to a uniformly chosen node @math . The nodes @math and @math may update their states based on the state of the other node. Previous work has focused on minimizing the time to consensus and the probability of error, while our goal is minimizing the number of communications. We show that when @math , consensus can be reached at linear communication cost, but this is impossible if @math . We also study a synchronous variant of the model, where our upper and lower bounds on @math for achieving linear communication cost are @math and @math , respectively. A key step is to distinguish when nodes can become aware of knowing the majority bit and stop communicating. We show that this is impossible if their memory is too low.
@cite_20: 
There has also been much research on the probabilistic models where, in each round, a node only contacts a small number of other nodes in order to learn their opinions, and possibly change its own. This type of models is usually called , and which were introduced in the 70s by Holley and Liggett @cite_20 and Clifford and Sudbury @cite_7 . A very important observation is that, in most cases, voter models have only two external invariant measures: one concentrated on the all- @math '' configuration, and the other one concentrated on the all- @math '' -- we can naturally call these two configurations consensus states''. Since then, there has been a range of work on voter models; in particular, let us cite @cite_5 @cite_9 @cite_8 @cite_26 @cite_13 @cite_19 which are specifically aimed at reaching consensus and have low communicational complexity (typically, @math ). However, in these works, the presence of adversarial nodes is usually either not allowed, or is supposed to be very minimal.