The Stellar Development Foundation explains the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) through a detailed walkthrough of how distributed consensus works. The article covers quorums, federated voting, nomination and ballot protocols, and provides a concrete example of how nodes reach agreement on transaction sets.
This educational article from the Stellar Development Foundation breaks down the Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP), the core mechanism enabling distributed consensus on the Stellar network. It begins with foundational concepts like quorum slices and blocking sets, then explains how nodes use federated voting to progress through vote, accept, and confirm states. The protocol operates in two stages: nomination (selecting candidate transaction sets) and balloting (ensuring unanimous confirmation). The article concludes with a detailed 14-step walkthrough demonstrating how nodes navigate network delays and partition scenarios to reach consensus on which transactions to commit to a ledger.
