Research corpus ConsensusBLC-STUDY-0145

In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm

A strong leader accepts entries, replicates them in order, and commits only when a majority of the current term has stored them.

Official external source only
Design paper
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Record

Authors: Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout
Date: 2014
Publisher: Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout
Version: Source cited by the 2014 study. The study is the reading. This page does not add a second essay.
Document ID: BLC-STUDY-0145
DOI: None recorded
Last reviewed: 1 October 2026
Licence: No licence recorded. Rights status under review.

No hash is published. This build does not store those PDF bytes, so a checksum would be invented. Where a legacy path exists, it points at the Internet Archive copy of the old library.

Direct answer

A strong leader accepts entries, replicates them in order, and commits only when a majority of the current term has stored them.

Where to read

Official source — Raft paper
Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

What changed

A reading of the public document. Not a copy of it, and not a claim about a later network that reused the name.

Relationships

Canonical readingRaft study
Related paperPaxos
Related paperTendermint

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

Author–date

Ongaro, D., & Ousterhout, J. (2014). In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm. Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout. https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf

BibTeX

@techreport{raft2014,
  title = {In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm},
  author = {Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout},
  year = {2014},
  institution = {Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout},
  url = {https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/raft}
}

RIS

TY  - RPRT
TI  - In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm
AU  - Diego Ongaro
AU  - John Ousterhout
PY  - 2014
PB  - Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout
UR  - https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

CSL-JSON

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-STUDY-0145",
    "title": "In Search of an Understandable Consensus Algorithm",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "Diego Ongaro"
      },
      {
        "literal": "John Ousterhout"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2014
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "Diego Ongaro and John Ousterhout",
    "URL": "https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status: Official source
Use status: Metadata and commentary only. The reading is the study page.
Rights: Official external source only
Training and retrieval: Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing Corrections