Introducing the consensus problem

The distributed consensus problem has been studied extensively in distributed systems research since the late 1970s. Distributed systems are classified into two main categories, namely message passing and shared memory. In the context of blockchain, we are concerned with the message passing type of distributed systems, where participants on the network communicate with each other via passing messages to each other.

Blockchain is a distributed system that relies upon a consensus mechanism, which ensures the safety and liveness of the blockchain network.

In the past decade, the rapid evolution of blockchain technology has been observed. Also, with this tremendous growth, research regarding distributed consensus has grown significantly. Researchers from industry and academia are especially interested in researching novel methods of consensus. A common research area is to convert traditional (classical) distributed consensus mechanisms into their blockchain...