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Marc Dufay

Publications and source records attributed to Marc Dufay.

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Optimal Adaptive Multi-Valued Byzantine Agreement

In Byzantine Agreement (BA), $n$ parties, out of which $t$ can be Byzantine, run a distributed protocol to agree on a common valid input. Traditionally, these protocols have a linear latency and quadratic message complexity, making them impractical at a large scale. In their recent work, Constantinescu, Dufay, Paramonov, and Wattenhofer consider the actual number of byzantine parties $f \leq t$ and work toward decoupling the dependency on $n$ and $t$ in the complexity. They obtain a BA protocol with $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n + t\cdot f)$ message complexity and $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(f)$ round complexity. However, their results are strictly limited to agreement on a binary value. Using the framework given by their work along with novel techniques, we extend these results for BA on an $L$-bit value. With $\kappa$ being a security parameter, and with optimal resiliency ($t < n/2$ in the synchronous setting or $t < n/3$ otherwise), we obtain: - In synchrony, a deterministic protocol with $\mathcal{O}(n\cdot (L + f \cdot \kappa ))$ bit complexity and $\mathcal{O}(f + \log n)$ round complexity. - In synchrony and partial synchrony, deterministic protocols with $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n \cdot \kappa + t\cdot (L + f \cdot \kappa))$ bit complexity and $\mathcal{O}(f)$ round complexity. - In asynchrony, a protocol with $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n \cdot \kappa + t\cdot(L + t \cdot \kappa))$ expected bit complexity and expected $\mathcal{O}(1)$ latency.

cs.DC

Predictions Can Only Help! Communication Efficient Byzantine Agreement with Predictions

In Byzantine agreement with predictions each process begins with an input value and some (unreliable) prediction bits. Recently, it has been shown that with \emph{classification predictions}---where the predictions predict each process to be honest or faulty---Byzantine agreement can be completed more quickly than without predictions, circumventing the traditional $\Omega(f)$ round lower bound. However, existing algorithms either handle limited prediction errors or send too many messages. Moreover, they all exchange $\Omega(n^3)$ bits---enough to allow the processes to approximately agree on the classifications. In fact, it almost seemed necessary to share a significant number of prediction bits if one wanted to tolerate a high number of incorrect predictions. In this paper, we show that this high level of communication is not inherent to a round-efficient protocol with predictions. We provide an unauthenticated algorithm with near-optimal $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^2)$ communication complexity and optimal resilience $t < n/3$. Furthermore, with authentication, we give an algorithm with optimal $\mathcal{O}(n^2\kappa)$ communication complexity (where $\kappa$ is a security parameter) and near-optimal resilience $t < (\frac{1}{2} - \epsilon)n$ for any constant $\epsilon > 0$. All of our results have optimal round complexity for any number of errors in the predictions.

cs.DC

General Convex Agreement with Near-Optimal Communication

Byzantine Agreement (BA) considers a setting of $n$ parties out of which up to $t$ can be byzantine (malicious), and requires the honest parties to agree on an input subject to a condition called \emph{validity}: if all honest parties have input $v$, the output agreed upon must be $v$. Convex Agreement (CA) strengthens BA by requiring the output agreed upon to lie in the convex hull of the honest parties' inputs. This validity condition captures aggregation tasks, such as robust learning and sensor fusion, where honest inputs may differ but should still constrain the final decision. Existing protocols for CA over general convexity spaces require at least $O(L \cdot n^2)$ bits of communication for $L$-bit inputs, leaving a gap with BA's $\Omega(L \cdot n)$ lower bound. We investigate this gap, and we present deterministic synchronous CA protocols with near-optimal communication complexity in the long-message regime. When $L=\Omega(n\cdot\kappa)$, where $\kappa$ is a security parameter, our protocols use $\mathcal{O}(L\cdot n\log n)$ bits of communication for finite convexity spaces and $\mathcal{O}(L\cdot n^{1+o(1)})$ communication for Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R}^d$. Our protocols also have asymptotically optimal round complexity $\mathcal{O}(n)$. If an upper bound $L$ on the honest inputs' length in bits is known in advance, we achieve near-optimal resilience $t 0$, where $\omega$ is the Helly number of the convexity space. When no such bound is known, we achieve resilience $t<n/(\omega+\varepsilon+1)$. As a sample application, we show how our protocols can be used to obtain efficient solutions for parallel instances of BA. Our main technical contribution is the use of extractor graphs to obtain a deterministic assignment of parties to committees, which is robust against adaptive adversaries.

cs.DC

A Deterministic Polylogarithmic Competitive Algorithm for Matching with Delays

In the online Min-cost Perfect Matching with Delays (MPMD) problem, $m$ requests in a metric space are submitted at different times by an adversary. The goal is to match all requests while (i) minimizing the sum of the distances between matched pairs as well as (ii) how long each request remained unmatched after it appeared. While there exist almost optimal algorithms when the metric space is finite and known a priori, this is not the case when the metric space is infinite or unknown. In this latter case, the best known algorithm, due to Azar and Jacob-Fanani, has competitiveness $\mathcal{O}(m^{0.59})$ which is exponentially worse than the best known lower bound of $\Omega(\log m / \log \log m)$ by Ashlagi et al. We present a $\mathcal{O}(\log^5 m)$-competitive algorithm for the MPMD problem. This algorithm is deterministic and does not need to know the metric space or $m$ in advance. This is an exponential improvement over previous results and only a polylogarithmic factor away from the lower bound.

cs.DS

From Few to Many Faults: Optimal Adaptive Byzantine Agreement

Achieving agreement among distributed parties is a fundamental task in modern systems, underpinning applications such as consensus in blockchains, coordination in cloud infrastructure, and fault tolerance in critical services. However, this task can be intensive, often requiring a large number of messages to be exchanged as well as many rounds of communication, especially in the presence of Byzantine faults. This makes efficiency a central challenge in the design of practical agreement protocols. In this paper, we study the problem of Binary Agreement and give protocols that are simultaneously optimal in both message and round complexity, parameterized by the actual number of Byzantine faults. In contrast to previous works, we demonstrate that optimal message complexity can be achieved without sacrificing latency. Concretely, for a system of $n$ parties tolerating up to $t$ Byzantine faults, out of which only $f \leq t$ are actually faulty, we give the following results: When $t = \Omega(n)$, in the synchronous (resp. partially synchronous) setting, with optimal resiliency $t < n/2$ (resp. $t < n/3$), we describe a deterministic protocol with optimal communication complexity $O(n \cdot (f+1))$ and optimal round complexity $O(f + 1)$. Building upon this previous result, when $t = o(n)$, for both the synchronous and partially synchronous setting, we describe a deterministic protocol with near-optimal communication complexity $\widetilde{O}(n + t\cdot f)$ and near-optimal round complexity $\widetilde{O}(f+1)$. Our approach relies on a novel use of dispersers to efficiently disseminate a value. For the asynchronous setting, we show a $\Omega(n + t^2)$ lower bound in expectation and provide a randomized protocol with near-optimal $\widetilde{O}(n + t^2)$ communication complexity and $O(1)$ round complexity in expectation.

cs.DC

Byzantine Stable Matching

In stable matching, one must find a matching between two sets of agents, commonly men and women, or job applicants and job positions. Each agent has a preference ordering over who they want to be matched with. Moreover a matching is said to be stable if no pair of agents prefer each other over their current matching. We consider solving stable matching in a distributed synchronous setting, where each agent is its own process. Moreover, we assume up to $t_L$ agents on one side and $t_R$ on the other side can be byzantine. After properly defining the stable matching problem in this setting, we study its solvability. When there are as many agents on each side with fully-ordered preference lists, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for stable matching to be solvable in the synchronous setting. These conditions depend on the communication model used, i.e., if parties on the same side are allowed to communicate directly, and on the presence of a cryptographic setup, i.e., digital signatures.

cs.DC

Validity in Network-Agnostic Byzantine Agreement

Byzantine Agreement (BA) considers a setting of $n$ parties, out of which up to $t$ can exhibit byzantine (malicious) behavior. Honest parties must decide on a common value (agreement), which must belong to a set determined by the honest inputs (validity). Depending on the use case, this set can grow or shrink, leading to various possible desiderata collectively known as validity conditions. Varying the validity property requirement can affect the regime under which BA is solvable. Our work investigates how the selected validity property impacts BA solvability in the network-agnostic model, where the network can either be synchronous with up to $t_s$ byzantine parties or asynchronous with up to $t_a \leq t_s$ byzantine parties. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a validity property to render BA solvable, both for the case with cryptographic setup and for the one without. This traces the precise boundary of solvability in the network-agnostic model for every validity property. Our proof of sufficiency provides a universal protocol, that achieves BA for a given validity property whenever the provided conditions are satisfied. We note that, for any non-trivial validity property, the condition $2 \cdot t_s + t_a < n$ is necessary for BA to be solvable, even with cryptographic setup. Specializing this claim to $t_a = 0$ gives that $t < n / 2$ is required whenever one expects a purely synchronous protocol to also work in an asynchronous network when there are no corruptions. This is especially surprising given that, for some validity properties, $t < n$ is a sufficient condition without the last stipulation.

cs.DC

An Approximation Algorithm for Distance-Constrained Vehicle Routing on Trees

In the Distance-constrained Vehicle Routing Problem (DVRP), we are given a graph with integer edge weights, a depot, a set of $n$ terminals, and a distance constraint $D$. The goal is to find a minimum number of tours starting and ending at the depot such that those tours together cover all the terminals and the length of each tour is at most $D$. The DVRP on trees is of independent interest, because it is equivalent to the virtual machine packing problem on trees studied by Sindelar et al. [SPAA'11]. We design a simple and natural approximation algorithm for the tree DVRP, parameterized by $\varepsilon >0$. We show that its approximation ratio is $\alpha + \varepsilon$, where $\alpha \approx 1.691$, and in addition, that our analysis is essentially tight. The running time is polynomial in $n$ and $D$. The approximation ratio improves on the ratio of 2 due to Nagarajan and Ravi [Networks'12]. The main novelty of this paper lies in the analysis of the algorithm. It relies on a reduction from the tree DVRP to the bounded space online bin packing problem via a new notion of reduced length.

cs.DS

General Univariate Estimation-of-Distribution Algorithms

We propose a general formulation of a univariate estimation-of-distribution algorithm (EDA). It naturally incorporates the three classic univariate EDAs \emph{compact genetic algorithm}, \emph{univariate marginal distribution algorithm} and \emph{population-based incremental learning} as well as the \emph{max-min ant system} with iteration-best update. Our unified description of the existing algorithms allows a unified analysis of these; we demonstrate this by providing an analysis of genetic drift that immediately gives the existing results proven separately for the four algorithms named above. Our general model also includes EDAs that are more efficient than the existing ones and these may not be difficult to find as we demonstrate for the OneMax and LeadingOnes benchmarks.

cs.NE