The paper considers the consensus problem in a partially synchronous system with Byzantine faults. It turns out that, in the partially synchronous system, all deterministic algorithms that solve consensus with Byzantine faults are leader-based. This is not the case of benign faults, which raises the following fundamental question: is it possible to design a deterministic Byzantine consensus algorithm for a partially synchronous system that is not leader-based? The paper gives a positive answer to this question, and presents a leader-free algorithm that is resilient-optimal and signature-free.
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