Polkadot

This series will be a discussion about security and consensus in Polkadot. In part 1, we will define some terms before getting into the details of how Polkadot creates and secures blocks.

In the introduction to this series, I outlined that a consensus algorithm helps a network of computers answer three questions. GRANDPA addresses the second.

Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension (BABE) is a block production engine that was inspired by Ouroboros Praos, another proof-of-stake protocol.

So far, we have discussed how BABE creates blockchain candidates and GRANDPA finalizes them. We know that we need more than two-thirds of validators to properly follow the protocol.