Majorum: Ebb-and-Flow Consensus with Dynamic Quorums

Read full text
Authors: Francesco D'Amato, Roberto Saltini, Thuy-An Tran, Yann Vonlanthen, Luca Zanolini
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Dynamic availability is the ability of a consensus protocol to remain live despite honest participants going offline and later rejoining. A well-known limitation is that dynamically available protocols, on their own, cannot provide strong safety guarantees during network partitions or extended asynchrony. Ebb-and-flow protocols [SP21] address this by combining a dynamically available protocol with a partially synchronous finality protocol that irrevocably finalizes a prefix. We present Majorum, an ebb-and-flow construction whose dynamically available component builds on a quorum-based protocol (TOB-SVD). Under optimistic conditions, Majorum finalizes blocks in as few as three slots while requiring only a single voting phase per slot. In particular, when conditions remain favourable, each slot finalizes the next block extending the previously finalized one.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Distributed systems and fault tolerance Software-Defined Networks and 5G Software System Performance and Reliability

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
7 January 2026
Document type
Preprint