How fair are DAG ledgers against transaction reordering attacks?
Order Fairness Evaluation of DAG-based ledgers
February 25, 2025
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.17270This paper studies fairness in transaction ordering within DAG-based distributed ledgers, particularly DagRider. It investigates how malicious actors can manipulate transaction order, impacting application-layer fairness. Results show DagRider, while more robust than some blockchains, remains vulnerable. The choice of deterministic ordering algorithm within DagRider significantly impacts its vulnerability.
Key takeaways for LLM-based multi-agent systems:
- Transaction order manipulation is a security concern in multi-agent systems relying on distributed ledgers.
- The specific algorithm for achieving consensus affects system vulnerability to manipulation.
- Byzantine actors coordinating actions can exploit vulnerabilities, even without controlling the majority.
- Focusing on DAGs in such a setting is especially relevant for multi-agent simulations in asynchronous settings where scaling is important, which LLMs require, and the algorithms studied in the paper provide specific approaches for handling transaction ordering with concrete algorithms, which is of interest for multi-agent applications.
- The deterministic ordering algorithm used within the consensus mechanism has a strong effect on fairness and resilience.
- This study has implications for fair resource allocation and reliable communication in LLM-based multi-agent environments.
- The fairness attacks presented in this paper demonstrate the importance of considering fairness attacks when designing LLMs-based agents operating in competitive environments.
- The insights on the effects of delays in such asynchronous systems highlight the importance of carefully simulating network latency when testing LLM-based multi-agent systems.