Facebook's LibraBFT: Our technical analysis

Facebook recently unveiled its new low-volatility cryptocurrency Libra, powered by a smart contract platform that’s designed to be “secure, scalable, and reliable”. Here's a technical deep-dive.

Quick take:

• The Libra blockchain will uses a robust and efficient state machine replication system called LibraBFT

• LibraBFT belongs to the class of classical BFT consensus algorithms. It is based on another consensus algorithm called HotStuff [2], which in turn borrows some of its consensus logic from yet another classical BFT algorithm called Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, pBFT

• LibraBFT improves upon HotStuff with a detailed specification and implementation of the Pacemaker mechanism. It also comes with a liveness analysis that consists of concrete bounds to transaction commitment

Libra Blockchain uses a robust and efficient state machine replication system called LibraBFT [1], which is the focus of this technical analysis. We discuss its properties and compare it to other Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocols with similar properties.