The Availability-Accountability Dilemma and its Resolution via Accountability Gadgets. (arXiv:2105.06075v3 [cs.CR] UPDATED)

For applications of Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols where
the participants are economic agents, recent works highlighted the importance
of accountability: the ability to identify participants who provably violate
the protocol. At the same time, being able to reach consensus under dynamic
levels of participation is desirable for censorship resistance. We identify an
availability-accountability dilemma: in an environment with dynamic
participation, no protocol can simultaneously be accountably-safe and live. We
provide a resolution to this dilemma by constructing a …

accountability dilemma resolution