Neo Announces New Consensus Mechanism For Its New Mainnet

Chinese-based blockchain platform Neo has implemented a new iteration of its consensus algorithm, the Byzantine Fault Tolerance mechanism (dBFT 2.0), on its mainnet, according to a press release on June 4.

The new algorithm purportedly provides immediate transaction finality. dBFT 2.0 includes a new procedure for reintegrating failed nodes back into the network, and also adds a “commit phase” of consensus, which alleviates forking issues by including a step that forces node assignment to new blocks.

The consensus mechanism dBFT reportedly differs from the ones for top cryptocurrency blockchains Bitcoin and Ethereum because of this commit phase. For Bitcoin, the consensus mechanism is a proof-of-work (PoW) protocol that allows BTC miners to compete on making the next block, which means that there are competing forks on the blockchain.

Ethereum, on the other hand, uses a PoW mechanism to both create and validate new blocks, which Neo purports can result in forks and potential transaction reversals.

Neo founder and creator of the first dBFT protocol, Erik Zhang, commented on how the new transaction finality standards translate into user benefits:

“With this improvement, dBFT will have more strict finality. Users only need to wait for one confirmation (15 seconds) to ensure the irreversibility of the transactions and prevent double-spending. This is very suitable for financial applications.”

DBFT 2.0 is reportedly a key step in creating the next iteration of the Neo blockchain, Neo 3.0. As previously reported on Cointelegraph, Neo announced in May that it planned to upgrade its mainnet to v2.10.2 on June 3. Zhang also commented on his plans to integrate giant entertainment applications on Neo 3.0, saying:

“When we talk about Neo 3.0 being ready for large-scale commercial use, we mean it provides the possibility to run large-scale applications with blockchain technology. In the future, we'd like to see applications such as YouTube, Alipay, and gaming giants like Tencent and Blizzard run on blockchain, and Neo 3.0 will allow these big organizations to do that.”