Comparative Analysis of Consensus Algorithms in Blockchain Networks

Abstract

Since 2009, with the invention of Bitcoin, the usage of blockchain technology is constantly increasing. From its initial financial use case, blockchain as a decentralized data storage system has grown to an entirely new information ecosystem and has been successfully applied in a wide range of applications in other industrial sectors, outside of finance. Given that the data is decentralized, the computer nodes participating in the network are in charge of adding new data to the blockchain, the authenticity of which is determined by consensus algorithms as a mechanism for maintaining data integrity. Bearing that in mind, consensus algorithms and their application are crucial for the reliability and data security in a blockchain. The aim of this paper is to perform an analysis of currently most used consensus algorithms, as well as their impact on key blockchain attributes.