Common use of Merge Protocol Clause in Contracts

Merge Protocol. After the network failure recovers, subgroup may need to be merged back into a single group. We now describe the merge protocol for k merging groups. In the first round of the merge protocol, each sponsor (the rightmost mem- ber of each group) broadcasts its tree with all bkeys to all other groups after updating the secret share of the sponsor and relevant [key, bkey] pairs up to the root node. Upon receiving these message, all members can uniquely and inde- pendently determine how to merge those k trees by tree management policy. Next, each sponsor computes [key, bkey] pairs on the key-path until either this computation reaches the root or the sponsor can not compute a new intermediate key. The sponsor broadcast his view of the tree to the group. All members then update their tree views with the new information. If the broadcasting sponsor computed the root key, upon receiving the broadcast, all other members can compute the root key as well.

Merge Protocol. After the network failure recovers, subgroup may need to be merged back into a single group. We now describe the merge protocol for k merging groups. In the first first round of the merge protocol, each sponsor (the rightmost mem- ber of each group) broadcasts its tree with all bkeys to all other groups after updating the secret share of the sponsor and relevant [key, bkey] pairs up to the root node. Upon receiving these message, all members can uniquely and inde- pendently determine how to merge those k trees by tree management policy. Next, each sponsor computes [key, bkey] pairs on the key-path until either this computation reaches the root or the sponsor can not compute a new intermediate key. The sponsor broadcast his view of the tree to the group. All members then update their tree views with the new information. If the broadcasting sponsor computed the root key, upon receiving the broadcast, all other members can compute the root key as well.