Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus

Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus

Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is defined as the feature of a distributed network to reach consensus (agreement on the same value) even when some of the nodes in the network fail to respond or respond with incorrect information.

An important consideration to be aware of while setting up a blockchain network is the requirements of Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus, compared with the Crash Fault Tolerant (CFT) one. Due to the underlying complexity of BFT consensus algorithms, a best practice is for the community to leverage the latest academically-proven consensus algorithms based on rigorous and peer-reviewed demonstrations of the safety and liveness properties. Such algorithms include the Tendermint, Algorand, Mir-BFT and HotStuff. There is also some on-going work on Golang-based implementation of the BFT-SMART algorithm for Hyperledger Fabric.  These are important reference points for blockchain architects and developers interested in adopting BFT consensus in the future.  At Oracle ,we are actively exploring the available options to ensure they meet the rigorous proof requirements as well as deliver operational characteristics, including performance and resilience required in enterprise applications.