Editing Fast Quantum Byzantine Agreement

This [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1060590.1060662 example protocol] is an efficient solution to the classical task of [[Byzantine Agreement]].  It allows multiple players in a network to reach an agreement in the presence of some faulty players. The protocol solves the task in the strongest possible failure model (called Byzantine failures). The quantum protocol is provably faster than any classical protocol.


'''Tags:''' [[:Category: Quantum Enhanced Classical Functionality|Quantum Enhanced Classical Functionality]][[Category: Quantum Enhanced Classical Functionality]], [[:Category: Multi Party Protocols|Multi Party Protocols]] [[Category: Multi Party Protocols]],  [[:Category:Specific Task|Specific Task]][[Category:Specific Task]], consensus task, failure-resilient distributed computing



==Assumptions==
* '''Network:''' The network consists of <math>n</math> players that are fully identified and completely connected with pairwise authenticated classical and quantum channels.
* '''Timing:''' The synchronous and asynchronous timing models are both considered.
* '''Message size:''' The size of messages (quantum and classical) are unbounded.
* '''Shared resources:''' The nodes do not share any prior entanglement or classical correlations.
* '''Failure:''' At most <math>t < n/3</math> (synchronous) or <math>t < n/4</math> (asynchronous) players show Byzantine failures. The Byzantine failed players are allowed to behave arbitrarily and collude to try and prevent the honest players from reaching agreement. The most severe model is used: Byzantine failures are adaptive, computationally unbounded and have full-information (full information of quantum states is modelled by giving a classical description of the state to the adversaries). Failures on the communication channels are not considered.

==Outline==
Here we will sketch the outline of the Fast Quantum Byzantine Agreement protocol by Ben-Or [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(3)]] that solves Byzantine Agreement using quantum resources. A very nice summary of this protocol is also presented in [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(1)]].
The main idea of this protocol is for each player to classically send its proposed input bit <math>b_i</math> to every other player in the network and then collaborate to determine what bit is proposed by a majority of honest players. In the case where failed players make this difficult, a 'good-enough' random coin is globally flipped  (using quantum resources, explained below), which is then classically post-processed to reach agreement among the honest parties. Let us make this more precise.

The protocol consists of consecutive rounds. Initially, each player sets a decision bit to its input bit. Then in each round, the players take the following steps:

* Each player transmits its current decision bit to every other player. If a player receives the same bit value from more than 2/3 of the players (including his own), then it sets his decision bit to this majority bit value. Otherwise, that player initiates a Quantum Oblivious Common Coin subroutine with all other players and sets his decision bit to the outcome of this subroutine.

* Then each player sequentially executes two classical subroutines to bias the decision value towards <math>0</math> or <math>1</math>  respectively. These subroutines guarantee that if the non-faulty players are in agreement, then they will terminate and successfully output the correct agreement value.
</br>

'''Quantum Oblivious Common Coin subroutine:''' 
The heart of this protocol comes from the quantum enhanced [[Oblivious Common Coin]]. At the end of this subroutine, each player <math>i</math> outputs a random bit <math>v_i</math>, such that with at least probability <math>p</math> (called the fairness) <math>v_i = x</math> for all players <math>i</math> and all <math>x \in \{0,1\} </math>. Intuitively, this subroutines tosses a common coin, where all players get either <math>0</math> or <math>1</math> with probability at least <math>p</math> each, but there may be executions (which occur with at most probability <math>1-2p</math>) where all players do not get the same output and no common coin is actually tossed. Since the players do not know whether the outcomes are all equal or not, this type of coin tossing is referred to
as oblivious common coin tossing. In particular, using quantum resources, this task can be achieved in constant rounds (in the defined model). The implementation of this subroutine makes use of a weakened
version of [[Verifiable Quantum Secret Sharing]] (VQSS).

==Notation==
*<math>n:</math> number of nodes
*<math>t:</math> number of failures
*<math>p:</math> fairness of the Oblivious Common Coin
*<math>k:</math> security parameter of the VQSS scheme used to implement the Oblivious Common Coin
*<math>b_i:</math> input bit of player <math>i</math>
*<math>v_i:</math> random bit output by player <math>i</math> in the Oblivious Common Coin subroutine
*<math>d:</math> the agreement value at the end of the protocol

==Requirements==
*Network stage: [[:Category:Fully Quantum Computing Network Stage|(Fault-tolerant) Quantum computing network stage]][[Category:Fully Quantum Computing Network Stage]]
*Relevant network stage parameters: Required number of qubits <math>q</math>.
*Benchmark values: The number of qubits <math>q</math> required is precisely known for a finite instance of the protocol. This is calculated in [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(1)]] for <math>n = 5</math>. They pick the smallest possible security parameter <math>k = 2</math> (of the VQSS scheme) and start calculating the required resources. Summarising they find that each node requires <math>\sim 200</math> operational qubits, on which quantum circuits of depth <math>\sim 2000</math> must be run. The consumed number of Bell pairs is 648 and the total classical communication cost is 21240 bits. It is not entirely clear if these are the expected costs or the cost per round.
*In a more asymptotic sense, it is known that the required number of qubits per node grows rapidly with the number of nodes <math>n</math>, making it, therefore, demanding on qubit requirements.

==Knowledge Graph==

{{graph}}

==Properties==
The protocol
* solves the problem in <math>O(1)</math> expected number of rounds, in particular independent of <math>n</math> and <math>t</math>, whereas classically a lower bound of <math>\Omega\left(\sqrt{n / \log(n)}\right)</math> is known [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(3), (6)]];
* tolerates <math>t \leq n/3</math> (synchronous) or <math>t \leq n/4</math> (asynchronous) Byzantine failures;
* reaches ''agreement'' (each player outputs the same bit) under the ''validity'' condition (the agreement value was proposed by at least one player) and is guaranteed to ''terminate eventually'' (infinite executions occur almost never - i.e. have probability measure zero).

The Quantum Oblivious Common Coin subroutine has a single parameter <math>k</math> (used in the [[Verifiable Quantum Secret Sharing scheme]]), but it is unclear from the works [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(1), (3)]] how the parameter <math>k</math> influences the guarantees of the protocol. 

Also note that the fairness <math>p</math> of the Quantum Oblivious Common Coin is not a parameter, but rather a result of the specific implementation of the protocol. The global Byzantine Agreement protocol can then tolerate up to <math>t < \left \lfloor{pn}\right \rfloor </math> failures. The Quantum Oblivious Common Coin subroutine proposed by [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(3)]] has <math>p > 1/3</math> (synchronous case, <math>p > 1/4</math> asynchronous case).

==Protocol Description==
This pseudocode is based on the reference [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(1)]].

====Fast Byzantine Agreement====
'''Input:''' Each player starts with an input bit <math>b_i</math> and the number of players <math>n</math>. <br>
'''Output:''' Each player outputs a bit <math>d_i</math>. With high probability, <math>d_i = d</math> for all players <math>i</math> (agreement) and some <math>d \in \{b_i\}_i</math> (validity).

'''Repeat''' forever (until something is returned):
# ''Subroutine <math>P_r(b_i)</math>:'' (this flips the oblivious common coin if no 2/3 majority is reached)
## Send <math>b_i</math> to all other players <math>j \neq i</math>. Receive a bit <math>b_j</math> from all other players;
## Let <math>x = \sum_j b_j</math>. '''If''' <math>x < n/3</math>, '''then''' set <math>b_i = 0</math>; '''elseif''' <math>x > 2n/3</math>, '''then''' set <math>b_i = 1</math>; '''else''' set <math>b_i = QOCC(n)</math> '''end''';
# ''Subroutine <math>P_0(b_i)</math>:'' (classical routine - biases towards 0 and finishes if 0 is the agreement value)
## Send <math>b_i</math> to all other players <math>j \neq i</math>. Receive a bit <math>b_j</math> from all other players;
## Let <math>x = \sum_j b_j</math>. '''If''' <math>x < n/3</math>, '''then return''' <math>0</math>; '''elseif''' <math>x > 2n/3</math>, '''then''' set <math>b_i = 1</math>; '''else''' set <math>b_i = 0</math> '''end''';
# ''Subroutine <math>P_1(b_i)</math>:'' (classical routine - biases towards 1 and finishes if 1 is the agreement value)
## Send <math>b_i</math> to all other players <math>j \neq i</math>. Receive a bit <math>b_j</math> from all other players;
## Let <math>x = \sum_j b_j</math>. '''If''' <math>x < n/3</math>, '''then''' set <math>b_i = 0</math>; '''elseif''' <math>x > 2n/3</math>, '''then return''' <math>1</math>; '''else''' set <math>b_i = 1</math> '''end''';


====Quantum Oblivious Common Coin (QOCC)====
'''Input:''' Each player starts with the number of players <math>n</math>. <br>
'''Output:''' Each player outputs a random bit <math>r_i</math>. With high probability, <math>d_i = d</math> for all players <math>i</math> (agreement) and some <math>d \in \{b_i\}_i</math> (validity).

==Further Information==
* The protocol [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(3)]] is based on the classical protocol of [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(7)]], where the classical Oblivious Common Coin is replaced by a quantum version. This Quantum Oblivious Common Coin is based on the Verifiable Quantum Secret Sharing Scheme presented in [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(4)]]. 
* The classical protocol of [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(7)]] also runs in constant expected time, but can only deal with limited-information adversaries. This means that the adversaries can not read communication between honest parties and read their internal state. 
* The classical lower bound in the full-information Byzantine failure model of <math>\Omega\left(\sqrt{n / \log(n)}\right)</math> is proven in [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(6)]].
* The work [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(3)]] also provides a protocol in a weaker failure model known as fail-stop failures. Here the nodes will crash and stop working indefinitely (stop responding). Another protocol in the same model is presented in [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(2)]].
* Another weakened version of the problem, known as detectable byzantine agreement, is solved with quantum resources in [[Quantum Byzantine Agreement#References|(5)]] (and following works). In detectable byzantine agreement, the protocol is also allowed to abort (upon detecting failures) instead of reaching agreement.

==References==
# [https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.04588 TNM (2017)]
# [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-642-15763-9 LS (2010)]
# [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1060590.1060662 BH (2005)]
# [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=510000 CGS (2002)]
# [https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.217901 FGM (2001)]
# [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=277733 JB (1998)]
# [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=262544 FM (1997)]
# [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~luca/cs174/byzantine.pdf LSP (1982)]
<div style='text-align: right;'>''*contributed by Bas Dirke''</div>