A survey on blockchain consensus mechanism: research overview, current advances and future directions

Abstract

PurposeAs the core technology of blockchain, various consensus mechanisms have emerged to satisfy the demands of different application scenarios. Since determining the security, scalability and other related performance of the blockchain, how to reach consensus efficiently of consensus mechanism is a critical issue in the blockchain.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for a research overview on the blockchain consensus mechanism, including the consensus mechanisms' consensus progress, classification and comparison, which are complemented by documentary analysis.FindingsThis survey analyzes solutions for the improvement of consensus mechanisms in blockchain that have been proposed during the last few years and suggests future research directions around consensus mechanisms. First, the authors outline the consensus processes, the advantages and disadvantages of the mainstream consensus mechanisms. Additionally, the consensus mechanisms are subdivided into four types according to their characteristics. Then, the consensus mechanisms are compared and analyzed based on four evaluation criteria. Finally, the authors summarize the representative progress of consensus mechanisms and provide some suggestions on the design of consensus mechanisms to make further advances in this field.Originality/valueThis paper summarizes the future research development of the consensus mechanisms.

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“…Where |𝑁𝑁 𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 | is the number of internal transaction in committee, 𝑇𝑇 𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 refers to the time at which a transaction is processed, 𝑇𝑇 𝑠𝑠𝑟𝑟𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠 is the time when a transaction is sent to the committee, and 𝑇𝑇 𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟𝑟 is the time when the leader receives a unanimous response from the members of the committee; 𝐴𝐴𝑉𝑉𝐴𝐴(𝑇𝑇 𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 ) calcaulates the average time of tx-th transaction processed by nodes in committee. The computation formula of 𝐴𝐴𝑉𝑉𝐴𝐴(𝑇𝑇 𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 ) such as (3), where |si| refers to the size of committee:…”

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