Research corpus ConsensusBLC-STUDY-0070

Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation

A fast path and a slow path. If a large supermajority is honest and an accelerator proposes quickly, transactions confirm at network speed. If not, the protocol falls back to an underlying chain.

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Record

Authors: Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi
Date: 2017
Publisher: Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi
Version: Source cited by the 2017 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0070
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

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Direct answer

A fast path and a slow path. If a large supermajority is honest and an accelerator proposes quickly, transactions confirm at network speed. If not, the protocol falls back to an underlying chain.

Where to read

Official source — ePrint 2017/454
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

What changed

The study separates the text from later network behaviour. This bibliographic page does not repeat that essay.

Relationships

Canonical readingThunderella study
Related paperSnow White
Related paperTendermint
Related paperHotStuff

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Pass, R., & Shi, E. (2017). Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation. Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi. https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/454

BibTeX

@techreport{thunderella2017,
  title = {Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation},
  author = {Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi},
  year = {2017},
  institution = {Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/454},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/thunderella}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation
AU  - Rafael Pass
AU  - Elaine Shi
PY  - 2017
PB  - Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi
UR  - https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/454
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0070",
    "title": "Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Rafael Pass"
      },
      {
        "literal": "Elaine Shi"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2017
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi",
    "URL": "https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/454",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections