An Analysis of Multi-hop Iterative Approximate Byzantine Consensus with Local Communication

Abstract: Iterative Approximate Byzantine Consensus (IABC) is a fundamental problem of fault-tolerant distributed computing where machines seek to achieve approximate consensus to arbitrary exactness in the presence of Byzantine failures. We present a novel algorithm for this problem, named Relay-IABC, which relies on the usage of a multi-hop relayed messaging system and crytographically secure message signatures. The use of signatures and relays allows the strict necessary network conditions of traditional IABC algorithms to be circumvented. In addition, we show evidence that Relay-IABC achieves faster convergence than traditional algorithms even under these strict network conditions with both theoretical analysis and experimental results.