BFT consensus protocol using two-phase voting (prevote + precommit) with a 2/3 supermajority threshold. Unlike Tower BFT which votes on a continuously growing PoH chain, Tendermint uses round-based block proposals. Tower BFT achieves lower latency by avoiding per-round communication overhead, leveraging PoH as a shared clock instead.
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BFT consensus protocol using two-phase voting (prevote + precommit) with a 2/3 supermajority threshold. Unlike Tower BFT which votes on a continuously growing PoH chain, Tendermint uses round-based block proposals. Tower BFT achieves lower latency by avoiding per-round communication overhead, leveraging PoH as a shared clock instead.
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Consensus, leader rotation, slots, epochs, and the runtime.
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Tendermint Consensus (tendermint-consensus) Category: Core Protocol Definition: BFT consensus protocol using two-phase voting (prevote + precommit) with a 2/3 supermajority threshold. Unlike Tower BFT which votes on a continuously growing PoH chain, Tendermint uses round-based block proposals. Tower BFT achieves lower latency by avoiding per-round communication overhead, leveraging PoH as a shared clock instead. Aliases: CometBFT Related: Consensus Mechanism, Tower BFT, Supermajority, Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT)
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The protocol by which nodes in a distributed network agree on the current state of the ledger. Common mechanisms include Proof of Work (Bitcoin), Proof of Stake (Ethereum, Solana), and BFT variants. Consensus ensures all honest nodes converge on the same transaction history despite potential network delays or malicious actors.
Solana's custom BFT consensus algorithm built on top of Proof of History. Tower BFT uses PoH as a clock to reduce communication overhead in traditional PBFT from O(n²) to O(n). Validators vote on forks with exponentially increasing lockout periods—each consecutive vote doubles the lockout, making rollbacks progressively more expensive. A fork is finalized when it reaches supermajority (66.7%+ of stake).
A threshold of more than 2/3 (66.7%) of total active stake agreeing on a particular fork. Supermajority is required for optimistic confirmation and, through sustained voting, for finality (rooting). If supermajority is lost (e.g., too many validators offline), the cluster halts until it recovers.
The ability of a distributed system to reach consensus despite some nodes behaving arbitrarily (maliciously or failing). BFT algorithms tolerate up to f faulty nodes in a network of 3f+1 total nodes (1/3 threshold). Solana's Tower BFT, Tendermint, and PBFT are BFT consensus variants. BFT is essential for permissionless blockchains.
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Consensus family where the longest (or heaviest) valid chain is considered canonical, originally used in Bitcoin's Proof of Work. Participants probabilistically converge on a single chain without explicit voting rounds. Solana's Tower BFT is not Nakamoto consensus — it uses explicit BFT voting with lockout periods rather than chain-length selection, providing deterministic rather than probabilistic finality.
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The protocol by which nodes in a distributed network agree on the current state of the ledger. Common mechanisms include Proof of Work (Bitcoin), Proof of Stake (Ethereum, Solana), and BFT variants. Consensus ensures all honest nodes converge on the same transaction history despite potential network delays or malicious actors.
Solana's custom BFT consensus algorithm built on top of Proof of History. Tower BFT uses PoH as a clock to reduce communication overhead in traditional PBFT from O(n²) to O(n). Validators vote on forks with exponentially increasing lockout periods—each consecutive vote doubles the lockout, making rollbacks progressively more expensive. A fork is finalized when it reaches supermajority (66.7%+ of stake).
A threshold of more than 2/3 (66.7%) of total active stake agreeing on a particular fork. Supermajority is required for optimistic confirmation and, through sustained voting, for finality (rooting). If supermajority is lost (e.g., too many validators offline), the cluster halts until it recovers.
The ability of a distributed system to reach consensus despite some nodes behaving arbitrarily (maliciously or failing). BFT algorithms tolerate up to f faulty nodes in a network of 3f+1 total nodes (1/3 threshold). Solana's Tower BFT, Tendermint, and PBFT are BFT consensus variants. BFT is essential for permissionless blockchains.
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A clock mechanism that cryptographically proves the passage of time between events. PoH uses a sequential SHA-256 hash chain where each output becomes the next input, creating a verifiable ordering of events without requiring consensus. The leader produces ~400,000 hashes per slot (~400ms), and any validator can verify the sequence in parallel, enabling Solana's high throughput by removing the need for validators to agree on time.
Solana's custom BFT consensus algorithm built on top of Proof of History. Tower BFT uses PoH as a clock to reduce communication overhead in traditional PBFT from O(n²) to O(n). Validators vote on forks with exponentially increasing lockout periods—each consecutive vote doubles the lockout, making rollbacks progressively more expensive. A fork is finalized when it reaches supermajority (66.7%+ of stake).
A time window during which a designated leader validator can produce a block. Each slot lasts approximately 400 milliseconds. Slots are numbered sequentially from genesis and grouped into epochs of 432,000 slots (~2-3 days). Not every slot produces a block—a skipped slot means the leader was offline or too slow.
A set of entries produced by a leader during a single slot. A block contains transactions bundled into entries, each with a PoH hash proving ordering. Blocks are broken into shreds for network propagation via Turbine. Maximum block size is limited by compute units (48M CU cap per block) rather than byte size.