Consensus Protocols

Full Title or Meme

A means for coming to a common consensus when not all parties trust each other.

Context

A distributed algorithm developed by researchers at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) helps overcome performance and reliability issues associated with consensus protocols. The QuePaxa algorithm is an asynchronous consensus protocol that is on par with leader-based protocols. Said EPFL's Bryan Ford, "QuePaxa is just as fast, efficient, low latency, and low cost in terms of network bandwidth, under normal conditions” as widely deployed leader-based protocols. QuePaxa allows a second leader to help the first leader without interference, with the potential for a third leader to assist both of them. Additionally, QuePaxa can survive noisy networks, high communication delays, unpredictably varying network delays, and deliberate denial-of-service attacks.