Simulation study on the security of consensus algorithms in DAG-based distributed ledger

Abstract

Due to the advantages of high volume of transactions and low resource consumption, Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has been considered a possible next-generation alternative to block-chain. However, the security of the DAG-based system has yet to be comprehensively understood. Aiming at verifying and evaluating the security of DAG-based DLT, we develop a Multi-Agent based IOTA Simulation platform called MAIOTASim. In MAIOTASim, we model honest and malicious nodes and simulate the configurable network environment, including network topology and delay. The double-spending attack is a particular security issue related to DLT. We perform the security verification of the consensus algorithms under multiple double-spending attack strategies. Our simulations show that the consensus algorithms can resist the parasite chain attack and partially resist the splitting attack, but they are ineffective under the large weight attack. We take the cumulative weight difference of transactions as the evaluation criterion and analyze the effect of different consensus algorithms with parameters under each attack strategy. Besides, MAIOTASim enables users to perform large-scale simulations with multiple nodes and tens of thousands of transactions more efficiently than state-of-the-art ones.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

distributed ledger / IOTA / Multi-Agent / system simulation

Shuzhe Li received his ME degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 2022. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, China since 2022. His research interests is cyberspace security

Hongwei Xu is a post doctor in the Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include cryptography and compressed sensing

Qiong Li received her PhD degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 2005. She is now working as a Professor in School of Cyberspace Security, Faculty of Computing at Harbin Institute of Technology, China. Her research interests include theory and application of quantum/classical cryptography, etc

Qi Han received the BS, MS and PhD degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology University, China in 2002, 2004 and 2009, respectively. Currently, he is a professor of Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His research interests include information hiding and forensics, weak signal detection

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 62071151). The authors would like to thank the IOTA foundation, and express gratitude to TU Munich Application and Middleware Systems (I13) for implementation of tip selection algorithms used in our platform.

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2024 Higher Education Press