Consensus

Namada uses CometBFT (opens in a new tab) (nee Tendermint Go) through the cometbft-rs (opens in a new tab) (nee tendermint-rs) bindings in order to provide peer-to-peer transaction gossip, Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) consensus, and state machine replication for Namada's custom state machine. CometBFT implements the Tendermint consensus algorithm, which you can read more about here (opens in a new tab).

The benefits of using CometBFT

CometBFT, coupled with a cryptoeconomic voting power allocation mechanism called "proof of stake", is designed so that that non-colluding validators acting in their (economic) self interest will follow the consensus algorithm in a predictable manner.

Using the CometBFT consensus algorithm comes with a number of benefits including:

• Fast finality
  • CometBFT achieves fast and deterministic finality, meaning that once a block is committed to the blockchain, it is irreversible. This is crucial for applications which rely on settled transactions that cannot be rolled back, and enables efficient, low-latency interoperability.
• Inter-blockchain communication system (IBC)
  • Interoperability with all other IBC-supporting chains, such as Osmosis (opens in a new tab), the Cosmos Hub (opens in a new tab), and Noble (opens in a new tab).
• Battle tested
  • The entire Cosmos ecosystem has been using CometBFT (nee Tendermint) for years.
• Customisable
  • Allows the configuration of various parameters, including the ability to implement a custom proof of stake algorithm (as Namada does).