Crisis: Probabilistically Self Organizing Total Order in Unstructured P2P Networks

Abstract

A framework for asynchronous, signature free, fully local and probabilistically converging total order algorithms is developed, that may survive in high entropy, unstructured Peer-to-Peer networks with near optimal communication efficiency. Regarding the natural boundaries of the CAP-theorem, Crisis chooses different compromises for consistency and availability, depending on the severity of the attack. The family is parameterized by a few constants and external functions called voting-weight, incentivation \& punishement, difficulty oracle and quorum-selector. These functions are necessary to fine tune the dynamics and very different long term behavior might appear, depending on any actual choice.