What Is A Consensus Algorithm And Why Is It Useful In Blockchain?

By Kapil Gauhar

The properties, as well as features some blockchains, have merely hinged upon the problems they are to solve. This individual idea has an infinite load of content associated with popular delusions among the people, reviews on the blockchain classifications and much more.

Diving deeper into the most popular consensus mechanisms. Knowing how they work and namely when and why don’t anyone needs the mechanism will help you to break the myths about blockchain and get a practical understanding of the technology. Before we get to know each consensus mechanism, it’s better to know why do we actually need them.

The Blockchain – A Means For Organizing Data

The Blockchain Pointers

1. The latest approach towards organizing database
2. It stores every single piece of information and the changes which take place
3. Also, Blockchain arranges data in the chain of blocks, instead of processing the last state of the accounting system

As it can be seen, there’s no any reference to the decentralization here, as blockchain doesn’t organize trustless relationships itself in a decentralized environment. Blockchain simply offers a very flexible as well as a secured way of arranging all the data, that in connection with the consensus mechanism, may allow for a successful operation of a partially or fully decentralized system.

It comes with no surprise that blockchain technology lets you build a block-structured database that stores the complete history of the changes, but any time you need to organize the trustless relationships in a decentralized environment, there is no way around the consensus mechanism.

What does the consensus mechanism do exactly?

This is very simple. The consensus is the way of reaching an agreement. Without a common consensus, a decentralized system will get scattered into pieces in split seconds. It makes no difference whether the members of the system trust each other particularly or don’t trust at all. Considering all that, they require to reach an agreement on the certain principle of functioning that would be common for all of them. And this is the main role of the consensus mechanism.

For a particular moment, there are a lot of consensus mechanisms. However, it’s important to comprehend the two key elements in this regard. They are –

1. There is no one universal approach of reaching the consensus, so far
2. In the meantime, there is neither good nor bad algorithm. It’s just about the requirements of the accounting systems.

Conclusion

That was all about the consensus mechanisms, which were tested in the real-world uses. Although it’s essential to remember that none of the consensuses is perfect, there’s no any universal way of reaching the consensus in a decentralized environment. Each of them has their pros and cons. That’s why algorithms are being frequently updated using many add-ins. At times, the approaches from different consensus blend and form hybrids.

The innovative field for the developers is very broad, which is exceptionally good news. As blockchain without consensus is similar to a Smartphone without the internet connectivity.