A Review of Asynchronous Byzantine Consensus Protocols

Abstract

Blockchain technology can be used in the IoT to ensure the data privacy collected by sensors. In blockchain systems, consensus mechanisms are a key technology for maintaining data consistency and correctness. Among the various consensus protocols, asynchronous Byzantine consensus protocols offer strong robustness as they do not rely on any network timing assumptions during design. As a result, these protocols have become a research hotspot in the field of blockchain. Based on different structural design approaches, asynchronous Byzantine consensus protocols can be divided into two categories: protocols based on the DAG structure and protocols based on the ACS structure. The paper describes their principles and summarizes the related research works. The advantages and disadvantages of the protocols are also compared and analyzed. At the end of the paper, future research directions are identified.

Keywords

• blockchain
• consensus protocols
• asynchronous network model
• Byzantine fault tolerance