State Machine Replication and Consensus with Byzantine Adversaries
Michael Davidson · 2023
The objective of state machine replication (SMR) is to emulate a centralized service in a distributed, fault-tolerant fashion. To this end, a set of mutually distrusting processes must agree on the execution of client-submitted commands. Since the advent of Bitcoin, the idea of SMR has received significant attention. This document surveys both classical and more modern research on SMR and details many of the most significant permissioned and permissionless algorithms, their performance, and security considerations.