Unifying Distributed Consensus Protocols

Establishing a consensus among distributed nodes [1] is a fundamental problem in Computer Science. Various solutions are proposed since early 80s by famous computer scientists including Leslie Lamport [2] and Barbara Liskov [3]. This problem has gained even more importance with the emergence of block-chain technologies since every decentralized block-chain platform needs to solve consensus problems among peers. Therefore, new algorithms have been proposed in recent years.
This project aims to close the gap between early canonical consensus algorithms and the recent block-chain consensus protocols by understanding the fundamental points behind these algorithms, changes in the requirements and underlying technology. Main focus will be on unifying and classifying these algorithms by applying rigorous formal treatment so that they become more accessible by non-experts and future research directions and open questions become clearer.
 
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_(computer_science)
[2] Pease M.C., Shostak R.E. and Lamport L.: Reaching agreement in the presence of faults. J. ACM 27(2): 228-234 (1980)
[3] Castro M. and Liskov B.: Practical byzantine fault tolerance. OSDI 1999: 173-186