| dc.description.abstract | Abstract: Blockchain is an emerging digital
technology for creating decentralized
systems which disrupts the digital world
with its complex and robust architecture. It
has a range of application domains; from
cryptocurrencies to decentralized software
applications which are commonly known as
DApps. The consensus mechanism is the core
of Blockchain technology. Reaching a
common agreement among the nodes of a
decentralized distributed network is a vital
but challenging process in consensus
mechanisms. Consensus mechanism enables
adding a new block to the blockchain making
it transparent, trustworthy and immutable.
This paper presents a systematic review of
existing mainstream consensus mechanisms
to highlight their strengths, impulsions and
limitations, and the evolution of consensus
mechanisms. On the basis of their canonical
properties, each consensus mechanism is
having its own performance characteristics.
The performance of a consensus mechanism
is determined in various criteria such as
throughput, mining power, energy
consumption, fault tolerance, and more.
However, there is no fixed common scale yet
to measure the performance. At present a
particular consensus mechanism is adopted
by an application domain purely based on
subjective criteria including trial and error.
Therefore selecting the most appropriate
consensus mechanism in a particular
application domain requires a systematic set
of guidelines to be developed. By exploring
the existing literature on various consensus
mechanisms and their performance
characteristics, this paper facilitates the
researchers to identify the most appropriate
consensus mechanism for a given application
domain. | en_US |
