A Survey on Consensus Mechanism for Blockchain

Abstract:   Blockchain is introduced as the basic technology of cryptocurrency, with characteristics of decentralization, stability, security, and immutability. Because there is no authority on the peer-to-peer network, the consensus mechanism is essential to make distributed peers reach an agreement on some data value. Including Proof-of-Work mechanism of first implementation of blockchain cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, several consensus mechanisms are introduced to meet the requirements of several kinds of applications. In this paper, we study some representative blockchain consensus mechanisms, analyse their characteristics, and consider matching between applications and consensus mechanisms.

Keywords: Blockchain, Consensus, Permissionless, Permissioned, Requirements of Applications.