Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT)

Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) is a consensus mechanism that enhances the Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism, specifically protecting against Byzantine faults in distributed networks. pBFT was initially developed by Barbara Liskov and Miguel Castro in the early 1990s and is widely used to maintain consensus in various distributed computer systems and blockchain platforms. It is designed for asynchronous systems, optimized for low overhead, and addresses many challenges associated with traditional Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus methods.