Practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) algorithm. Many algorithms are called Byzantine fault tolerant. The name comes from the allegory that presented the original problem.
Imagine an ancient Byzantine army moving to capture a city. The idea is to attack from all sides. Once the generals of the army reach the city, they must agree on when and how to attack. The difficulty is in how to agree. The generals can communicate only by messenger, but the messengers could be captured by the enemy, and there is the additional fear that one or more of the generals or their commanders are traitors.
The generals need a method to ensure that all the loyal generals agree on the same plan, and that a small number of possible traitors cannot cause the mission to fail.
The loyal generals will all do what the method says they will do, but the traitors...
