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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

  1. Mine, in the paper's sense, by producing a block that references a cordial set of parents.
  2. Update the DAG.
  3. Commit when the cordial structure and the quorum condition say the prefix is decided.
  4. 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.