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Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols serve as a fundamental yet intricate component of distributed data management systems in untrustworthy environments. BFT protocols exhibit different design principles and performance characteristics under varying workloads and fault scenarios. The proliferation of BFT protocols and their growing complexity have made it increasingly challenging to analyze the performance and possible application scenarios of each protocol. This demonstration showcasesBFTGym, an interactive platform that allows audience members to (1) evaluate, compare, and gather insights into the performance of various BFT protocols under a wide range of conditions, and (2) prototype new BFT protocols rapidly.
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This content will become publicly available on July 31, 2026
Building Databases with Distributed Trust
Modern distributed systems involve a diverse set of participants—ranging from cloud providers to jurisdictions, organizations, and individuals—who need to share data without necessarily trusting one another. These systems must ensure data availability and integrity, even when parties have disjoint, selfish, or adversarial interests. Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) protocols provide strong guarantees in such settings and, for example, underpin much of today’s blockchain infrastructure. However, existing BFT solutions often fall short, delivering poor performance and rigid, restrictive interfaces.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2106954
- PAR ID:
- 10641527
- Publisher / Repository:
- Cornell University
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Institution:
- Cornell University
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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