Consensus Glossary

Browse 4 consensus terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

4 Consensus Terms

Leader Election: A coordination pattern in distributed systems where nodes agree on a single leader responsible for a specific task (e.g., writes, scheduling). If the leader...
proof of stake: Proof of Stake (PoS) is a consensus mechanism used by blockchain networks to validate transactions and create new blocks, where validators are chosen based on...
proof of work: A consensus mechanism where participants must expend computational effort to propose new blocks, making it economically impractical to attack the network. The...
Split Brain: A failure mode in distributed systems where a network partition causes two or more subsets of nodes to each believe they are the active primary, leading to...