Recent advances in consensus protocols for blockchain: a survey

摘要

As the core of a blockchain system, the consensus mechanism not only helps to maintain the consistency of node data, but also gets involved in the issuance of tokens and prevention of attacks. Since the first blockchain system was born, it has been continuously improved with the development of blockchain technology and evolved into multiple new branches. Starting with the basic introduction of consensus and the classic Byzantine Generals Problem in distributed computing area, this survey utilizes a thorough classification to explain current consensus protocols in the blockchain system, presents the characteristics of mainstream protocols (PoW, PoS, DPoS, PBFT, etc.) and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of them. Then we evaluate the performance qualitatively and quantitatively. In the end, we highlight several research directions for developing more practical consensus protocols for the future.