Blockchain consensus unraveled

Abstract

Since the introduction of Bitcoin---the first wide-spread application driven by blockchains---the interest of the public and private sector in blockchains has skyrocketed. At the core of this interest are the ways in which blockchains can be used to improve data management, e.g., by enabling federated data management via decentralization, resilience against failure and malicious actors via replication and consensus, and strong data provenance via a secured immutable ledger.