Tendermint: Consensus without Mining

The problem the paper names

Proof-of-work chains confirm by depth. Application builders still have to decide how many blocks is 'enough', and reorgs remain possible. Tendermint treats a block that received a supermajority of precommits as final.

What the design proposes

• Validators are known for the round. Voting weight is assigned, not discovered by hashing.
• Rounds move through proposal, prevote and precommit. A lock rule stops a validator equivocating across values.
• Accountability: if safety breaks, evidence of double-signing can be shown.

How the mechanism is specified

• The protocol assumes partial synchrony for liveness and a bound on faulty voting power for safety.
• Applications sit above the engine. They do not invent their own fork choice.
• Membership changes are a protocol concern of their own. The note does not make an open set of anonymous miners.

What this page does not treat as proven

• A named validator set is a governance object. The paper does not tell a venture who should hold the keys.
• Cosmos zones, IBC and the SDK are later. See the Cosmos paper for the network-of-ledgers claim.
• Finality is only as good as the assumption that less than one third of voting power equivocates.

Why a venture studio still reads it

This is the right reference when a consortium or a zone needs a final vote rather than a probabilistic chain. It is the wrong reference if the venture cannot name who is allowed to sign.