TrustChain: A Blockchain Framework for Auditing and Verifying Aggregators in Decentralized Federated Learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hallaji, Ehsan, Razavi-Far, Roozbeh, Saif, Mehrdad
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hallaji, Ehsan
Razavi-Far, Roozbeh
Saif, Mehrdad
author_facet Hallaji, Ehsan
Razavi-Far, Roozbeh
Saif, Mehrdad
contents The server-less nature of Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) requires allocating the aggregation role to specific participants in each federated round. Current DFL architectures ensure the trustworthiness of the aggregator node upon selection. However, most of these studies overlook the possibility that the aggregating node may turn rogue and act maliciously after being nominated. To address this problem, this paper proposes a DFL structure, called TrustChain, that scores the aggregators before selection based on their past behavior and additionally audits them after the aggregation. To do this, the statistical independence between the client updates and the aggregated model is continuously monitored using the Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC). The proposed method relies on several principles, including blockchain, anomaly detection, and concept drift analysis. The designed structure is evaluated on several federated datasets and attack scenarios with different numbers of Byzantine nodes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_16406
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TrustChain: A Blockchain Framework for Auditing and Verifying Aggregators in Decentralized Federated Learning
Hallaji, Ehsan
Razavi-Far, Roozbeh
Saif, Mehrdad
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
The server-less nature of Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) requires allocating the aggregation role to specific participants in each federated round. Current DFL architectures ensure the trustworthiness of the aggregator node upon selection. However, most of these studies overlook the possibility that the aggregating node may turn rogue and act maliciously after being nominated. To address this problem, this paper proposes a DFL structure, called TrustChain, that scores the aggregators before selection based on their past behavior and additionally audits them after the aggregation. To do this, the statistical independence between the client updates and the aggregated model is continuously monitored using the Hilbert-Schmidt Independence Criterion (HSIC). The proposed method relies on several principles, including blockchain, anomaly detection, and concept drift analysis. The designed structure is evaluated on several federated datasets and attack scenarios with different numbers of Byzantine nodes.
title TrustChain: A Blockchain Framework for Auditing and Verifying Aggregators in Decentralized Federated Learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16406