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Diving into Protocol Consensus
You have probably heard about PoW, PoS, and DPoS. They are consensus protocols or consensus algorithm. In the article, I will describe what consensus exactly is, how transactions are inserted into blocks and what are the most important properties of a consensus. I will try to explain it easily without deep details and no math. After reading you should know the basic principles and requirements for making consensus in a distributed environment.
Consensus definition
Generally speaking, the distributed network consists of a certain number of nodes that have the same rights related to change data. In the crypto world, data are stored in a ledger. The ledger is in most cases a chain of blocks. The very first block of the chain is the so-called genesis block. To add another block behind the genesis block, and thus change the ledger, requires mutual agreement of nodes in the network. The protocol defines all rules which must be followed to achieve the agreement. If the agreement is not achieved then the ledger is not changed. Adding a new block always requires making an agreement upon the block that is to be added at the end of the blockchain.
Copy of the ledger sits on all nodes and they all have the same version at a given time. Once the agreement is achieved a new block is added into the blockchain on all nodes simultaneously. Thus, the ledger…
