GPoS: Geospatially-aware Proof of Stake

Abstract: Geospatial decentralization is essential for blockchains, ensuring regulatory resilience, robustness, and fairness. We empirically analyze five major Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchains: Aptos, Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, revealing that a few geographic regions dominate consensus voting power, resulting in limited geospatial decentralization. To address this, we propose Geospatially aware Proof of Stake (GPoS), which integrates geospatial diversity with stake-based voting power. Experimental evaluation demonstrates an average 45% improvement in geospatial decentralization, as measured by the Gini coefficient of Eigenvector centrality, while incurring minimal performance overhead in BFT protocols, including HotStuff and CometBFT. These results demonstrate that GPoS can improve geospatial decentralization {while, in our experiments, incurring minimal overhead} to consensus performance.