LibraryConsensus2023Design paperCorpus record
Cordial Miners: Fast and Efficient Consensus for Every Eventuality
Cordial Miners. Idit Keidar, Oded Naor, Ouri Poupko and Ehud Shapiro.
Cordial Miners build a DAG with a simple cordial rule for including other miners' blocks, aiming at responsiveness without the certificate tax of the earlier DAG BFTs.
A reading of the public paper. Not a copy, not a benchmark, and not a claim about any later network.
Ask whether a block is required to acknowledge the blocks it has seen. A DAG that allows ignoring honest blocks has left this design.
The five-minute read
The defect
DAG protocols were either waiting on certificates or assuming more synchrony than they admitted.
The proposal
Cordial Miners build a DAG with a simple cordial rule for including other miners' blocks, aiming at responsiveness without the certificate tax of the earlier DAG BFTs.
Inclusion of other blocks is a duty in the protocol, not a favour.
Responsiveness means the commit follows the actual network delay rather than a fixed timeout.
The bound
The name miner here is not proof of work.
One action, walked through
- Mine, in the paper's sense, by producing a block that references a cordial set of parents.
- Update the DAG.
- Commit when the cordial structure and the quorum condition say the prefix is decided.
- What is the timeout, if any?
The argument, unpacked
What the paper is for
Ask whether a block is required to acknowledge the blocks it has seen. A DAG that allows ignoring honest blocks has left this design.
What happened after
The DAG-BFT line splits between certified, uncertified, and cordial variants. They are not interchangeable.
What has to be true
- The name miner here is not proof of work.
- The paper is not a public chain.
- Simple inclusion rules can still censor if the implementation adds a policy on top.
What happened after the paper
The DAG-BFT line splits between certified, uncertified, and cordial variants. They are not interchangeable.
What to check before you use the idea
- Must a block reference the honest blocks its author has seen?
- What is the timeout, if any?
- Is the set of participants known?
Terms
- Cordial
- A requirement to include other parties' recent blocks.
- Responsive
- Progress at the speed of the network rather than a fixed clock.
The problem the paper names
DAG protocols were either waiting on certificates or assuming more synchrony than they admitted.
What the design proposes
- Inclusion of other blocks is a duty in the protocol, not a favour.
- Responsiveness means the commit follows the actual network delay rather than a fixed timeout.
- The safety argument is still a quorum argument.
How the mechanism is specified
- Mine, in the paper's sense, by producing a block that references a cordial set of parents.
- Update the DAG.
- Commit when the cordial structure and the quorum condition say the prefix is decided.
What this page does not treat as proven
- The name miner here is not proof of work.
- The paper is not a public chain.
- Simple inclusion rules can still censor if the implementation adds a policy on top.
Why a venture studio still reads it
Ask whether a block is required to acknowledge the blocks it has seen. A DAG that allows ignoring honest blocks has left this design.
This is Blockchain Lab's reading of a public design paper. It is not the paper, not a copy of it, and not an offer of tokens, equity, custody or a partnership. Later network behaviour can diverge from the text. Nothing here is investment, legal or technical advice.
Research status: Design paper. Last reviewed: 1 October 2026. This is a reading of a public paper, not investment, legal or security advice.