Rethinking byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) protocols in the age of blockchains

区块链是一项激进的新技术。它有可能深刻颠覆包括金融、医疗保健、物流和公共管理在内的广泛行业。尽管有巨大的潜力，但今天的区块链要想被广泛采用，还需要克服几个主要障碍。首先，它可以慢下来。其次，它可能是昂贵的。第三，可扩展性问题。例如，Dapper Labs（Axiom Zen的区块链子公司）在2017年底推出了世界上第一款以太坊游戏CryptoKitties，很快就为以太坊区块链的所有用户造成了网络拥塞。受此启发，我们的目标是与Dapper Labs一起开发一个理论框架，使我们能够比较和评估各种解决方案，以解决当今区块链面临的主要障碍。

Blockchain is a radical new technology. It has the potential to profoundly disrupt a wide range of industries including finance, healthcare, logistics, and public administration. Despite its great potential, today's blockchain has several major hurdles to overcome in order to see widespread adoption. First, it can slow. Second, it can be costly. Third, it has scalability issues. For example, Dapper Labs (Axiom Zen's blockchain subsidiary) launched CryptoKitties - the world's first Ethereum game - in late 2017, soon creating network congestion for all users of the Ethereum blockchain. Motivated by this, we aim to develop a theoretical framework together with Dapper Labs that allows us to compare and evaluate various solutions that address the major hurdles facing today's blockchain.