Sliding Window Challenge Process for Congestion Detection

Many prominent smart contract applications such as payment channels, auctions, and voting systems often involve a mechanism in which some party must respond to challenge or appeal action within fixed time limit. This pattern of challenge-response mechanisms poses great risks if, during periods high transaction volume, the network becomes congested. In this case, fee market competition can prevent inclusion response blocks, causing harm. As result, responders are allowed long submit their overpay fees. To overcome these problems improve protocols, we suggest secure that detects congestion blocks adjusts deadline accordingly. The responder is thus guaranteed extension should arise. We lay theoretical foundations for signals blockchains then proceed analyze discuss possible attacks on evaluate its robustness. Our results show Ethereum, using short deadlines low 3 h, protocol has >99% defense rate from even by miners with up $$33\%$$ computational power. Using shorter one hour also similar attackers $$27\%$$