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zeekay abf99d05fc papers: reorganize into per-paper dirs, add Antje Worring as co-author
Restructured from flat .tex/.pdf files into per-paper subdirectories.
Added Antje Worring as co-author on all papers.
Synced PDFs to pdfs/ for download site.
2026-04-18 21:50:07 -07:00

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\section{Introduction}
\label{sec:introduction}
DAG-based consensus protocols decouple data dissemination from ordering, enabling
parallel processing that exceeds the throughput of sequential blockchains.
Narwhal~\cite{danezis2022narwhal} achieves 130,000 TPS by structuring the mempool
as a DAG but still relies on a sequential ordering layer (Tusk or Bullshark).
The metastable consensus family~\cite{rocket2019wave} provides leaderless ordering
but has been analyzed primarily for individual transaction finalization.
Nova bridges this gap by applying metastable sampling to DAG subgraphs rather than
individual vertices. The key insight is that in a DAG, finalizing a single vertex
implicitly finalizes all its ancestors (if they have no conflicts with other finalized
ancestors). Nova exploits this observation through the \emph{supernova burst} mechanism:
when a frontier vertex crosses the confidence threshold, the entire cone of unfinalized
ancestors is finalized simultaneously.
\paragraph{Contributions.}
\begin{enumerate}[nosep]
\item The Nova protocol with supernova burst finalization (\S\ref{sec:protocol}).
\item A formal model of burst size distribution and throughput analysis (\S\ref{sec:throughput}).
\item Safety and liveness proofs for DAG burst finalization (\S\ref{sec:safety}).
\item Empirical evaluation achieving 8,500 TPS on a 1,000-node testnet (\S\ref{sec:evaluation}).
\end{enumerate}
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