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Recent advances in consensus protocols for blockchain: a survey

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Abstract

As the core of a blockchain system, the consensus mechanism not only helps to maintain the consistency of node data, but also gets involved in the issuance of tokens and prevention of attacks. Since the first blockchain system was born, it has been continuously improved with the development of blockchain technology and evolved into multiple new branches. Starting with the basic introduction of consensus and the classic Byzantine Generals Problem in distributed computing area, this survey utilizes a thorough classification to explain current consensus protocols in the blockchain system, presents the characteristics of mainstream protocols (PoW, PoS, DPoS, PBFT, etc.) and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of them. Then we evaluate the performance qualitatively and quantitatively. In the end, we highlight several research directions for developing more practical consensus protocols for the future.

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Notes

  1. Global computing power distribution [Online], available: https://btc.com/stats/pool, October 14, 2019.

  2. Energy consumption statistics [Online], available: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption, October 14, 2019.

  3. Primecoin Website [Online], available: http:// primecoin.io/, October 14, 2019.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61872416, 51879210, 51479159, 61671216, 61871436, 61872415 and 61702204; by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China under Grant 2019kfyXJJS017; and by the fund of Hubei Key Laboratory of Transportation Internet of Things under Grant 2018IOT004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Shaohua Wan

  2. School of Information and Safety Engineering, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, 430073, China

    Shaohua Wan

  3. School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Meijun Li, Gaoyang Liu & Chen Wang

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  1. Shaohua Wan
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Wan, S., Li, M., Liu, G. et al. Recent advances in consensus protocols for blockchain: a survey. Wireless Netw 26, 5579–5593 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-019-02195-0

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