ICONLOOP Unveils LFT2, a High-Performance Consensus Algorithm
After three years of research and development, ICONLOOP has completed LFT2, a consensus algorithm that delivers a substantial performance improvement over the PBFT consensus algorithm. LFT2 improves performance by making PBFT lighter, guaranteeing greater scalability and network bandwidth than conventional PBFT while also securing full safety and liveness.
A consensus algorithm is the core mechanism that guarantees the irreversibility and reliability of every transaction that takes place on a decentralized distributed system — that is, on a blockchain. As conventional Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithms have shown their limits in relatively slow speed and heavy energy consumption, more advanced consensus algorithms have appeared one after another, and PBFT-style consensus algorithms in particular have seen wide adoption. PBFT consensus algorithms are applied not only in next-generation blockchain projects but in most enterprise blockchain environments, and the distributed ledger platform Hyperledger also uses PBFT where consensus is required.
PBFT-based algorithms require a large number of message exchanges to reach consensus on a single block. LFT2, by contrast, reduces the number of messages needed for consensus compared with PBFT while still guaranteeing safety and liveness, increasing network throughput and minimizing latency.
LFT2 has also been verified by the research team of Professor Yongdae Kim at KAIST, which drew attention in 2019 for publishing a report analyzing vulnerabilities in the Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) consensus algorithm used by the well-known blockchain project Stellar. "We analyzed the LFT2 consensus algorithm developed by ICONLOOP and proved that LFT2 guarantees liveness and safety," the research team said.
"PBFT-style consensus algorithms offered higher performance than earlier consensus algorithms, but left something to be desired in scalability and network bandwidth," said ICONLOOP CTO Hyukgon Ryu. "With the development of LFT2, we now have greater network scalability and efficiency than before, and we believe this will contribute to building more stable blockchain networks."
* Reference link: LFT2 (Loop Fault Tolerance 2) GitHub page
https://github.com/icon-project/LFT2/blob/master/Whitepaper%20-%20LFT2%20(ENG).pdf
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