Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 17 hours ago
Maurice Herlihy, An Wang Professor of Computer Science, Brown University
Modern distributed data management systems face a new challenge: how can autonomous, mutually-distrusting parties cooperate safely and effectively? Addressing this challenge brings up many questions familiar from classical distributed systems. Nevertheless, many of these questions requires subtle rethinking when participants are autonomous and potentially adversarial.
We propose the notion of a cross-chain deal, a new way to structure complex distributed computations that manage assets in an adversarial setting. Deals are inspired by classical atomic transactions, but differ in important ways to accommodate the decentralized and untrusting nature of the exchange.
Joint work with Barbara Liskov and Liuba Shrira.
Maurice Herlihy, An Wang Professor of Computer Science, Brown University
Modern distributed data management systems face a new challenge: how can autonomous, mutually-distrusting parties cooperate safely and effectively? Addressing this challenge brings up many questions familiar from classical distributed systems. Nevertheless, many of these questions requires subtle rethinking when participants are autonomous and potentially adversarial.
We propose the notion of a cross-chain deal, a new way to structure complex distributed computations that manage assets in an adversarial setting. Deals are inspired by classical atomic transactions, but differ in important ways to accommodate the decentralized and untrusting nature of the exchange.
Joint work with Barbara Liskov and Liuba Shrira.
