tendermint/spec/consensus/readme.md

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order: 1
parent:
  title: Consensus
  order: 4
---

# Consensus

Specification of the Tendermint consensus protocol.

## Contents

- [Consensus Paper](./consensus-paper) - Latex paper on
  [arxiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.04938) describing the
  core Tendermint consensus state machine with proofs of safety and termination.
- [BFT Time](./bft-time.md) - How the timestamp in a Tendermint
  block header is computed in a Byzantine Fault Tolerant manner
- [Creating Proposal](./creating-proposal.md) - How a proposer
  creates a block proposal for consensus
- [Light Client Protocol](./light-client) - A protocol for light weight consensus
  verification and syncing to the latest state
- [Signing](./signing.md) - Rules for cryptographic signatures
  produced by validators.
- [Write Ahead Log](./wal.md) - Write ahead log used by the
  consensus state machine to recover from crashes.

The protocol used to gossip consensus messages between peers, which is critical
for liveness, is described in the [reactors section](./consensus.md).

There is also a [stale markdown description](consensus.md) of the consensus state machine
(TODO update this).