Introducing Minimmit: Fast Finality with Even Faster Blocks A different take on propose-and-vote consensus, Minimmit optimizes for faster blocks instead of a crash fault tolerant "slow path".

Over the last few months, there has been renewed interest in developing propose-and-vote consensus protocols that reach finality after just one round of voting (~100-200ms). "Two-Phase" protocols, not without tradeoff, only remain safe if a Byzantine adversary controls less than ~20% of stake (rather than the ~33% tolerance typically considered).

Concerned primarily with addressing this drop in fault tolerance, recent constructions propose augmenting Byzantine fault tolerance with crash fault tolerance to retain some path to finality under a "blended" f+ assumption.

Like other constructions, Minimmit (co-authored by @B_Chou) delivers minimal confirmation latency under the ~20% Byzantine fault assumption. Unlike those constructions, however, it optimizes for view latency instead of f+ confirmation robustness.

In an alto-like configuration, we expect a Minimmit-powered blockchain to reach 130ms block time and 250ms finality. In a regionally-biased configuration, we expect Minimmit to deliver 50ms block time and 100ms finality.

While not yet peer-reviewed or fully implemented, we are releasing Minimmit under both an MIT and Apache-2 license for others to build with and build upon.