SoK: Blockchain Light Clients

Panagiotis Chatzigiannis; Foteini Baldimtsi; Konstantinos Chalkias

Paper 2021/1657

SoK: Blockchain Light Clients

Panagiotis Chatzigiannis, Foteini Baldimtsi, and Konstantinos Chalkias

Abstract

Blockchain systems, as append-only ledgers, are typically associated with linearly growing participation costs. Therefore, for a blockchain client to interact with the system (query or submit a transaction), it can either pay these costs by downloading, storing and verifying the blockchain history, or forfeit blockchain security guarantees and place its trust on third party intermediary servers. With this problem becoming apparent from early works in the blockchain space, the concept of a light client has been proposed, where a resource-constrained client such as a browser or mobile device can participate in the system by querying and/or submitting transactions without holding the full blockchain but while still inheriting the blockchain's security guarantees. A plethora of blockchain systems with different light client frameworks and implementations have been proposed, each with different functionalities, assumptions and efficiencies. In this work we provide a systematization of such light client designs. We unify the space by providing a set of definitions on their properties in terms of provided functionality, efficiency and security, and provide future research directions based on our findings.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Applications
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Minor revision. Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2022
Keywords: blockchain light clients consensus long range attacks
Contact author(s): pchatzig @ gmu edu
foteini @ gmu edu
kostas @ mystenlabs com
History: 2022-05-04: revised; 2021-12-17: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2021/1657
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2021/1657,
      author = {Panagiotis Chatzigiannis and Foteini Baldimtsi and Konstantinos Chalkias},
      title = {SoK: Blockchain Light Clients},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2021/1657},
      year = {2021},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1657}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1657}
}