# Proof of Authority
One of the biggest decisions when designing a public blockchain system is about designing the consensus algorithm. The protocol not only dictates how blockchain participants agree on the blockchain grows but embodies the governance model imposed upon the system.
Recall that the underlying design philosophy of our governance model is that
neither a total centralization nor a total decentralization would be the correct answer, but a compromise from and balance of both would.
VeChainThor implements the Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus algorithm which suits our governance model which states that there would not be anonymous block producers, but a fixed number of known validators (Authority Masternodes) authorized by the steering committee of the VeChain Foundation.
Quote
“It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet
To be an Authority Masternode (AM), the individual or entity voluntarily discloses who they are (identity and reputation by extension) to the VeChain Foundation in exchange for the right to validate and produce blocks. It is their identities and reputations placed at stake that give all the AMs additional incentives to behave and keep the network secure. In VeChainThor, each AM has to go through a strict know-your-customer (KYC) procedure and satisfy the minimum requirements set by the Foundation.
When discussing a consensus algorithm, we must answer the following questions:
- When is a new block produced?
- Who generates the block?
- How to choose the "trunk" from two legitimate blockchain branches?
# When
VeChainThor schedules a new block to be generated once every
# Who
PoA allows every available AM to have an equal opportunity to be selected to produce blocks. To do that, we introduce a Deterministic Pseudo-Random Process (DPRP) and the “active/inactive” AM status to decide whether a particular AM uint32
) and timestamp uint64
). Here
where
Let
where
AM
# AM Status Updating
Given the latest block
and mark
# Trunk
The final question we need to answer is how to choose the “trunk” from two legitimate blockchain branches. Since there is no computational competition in PoA, the “longest chain” rule does not apply. Instead, we consider the better branch as the one witnessed by more AMs.
To do that, we compute the accumulated witness number (AWN),
with TotalScore
.
Formally, given two branches <