# Glossary ### Adversary model The fraction of malicious or faulty nodes that the consensus protocol can tolerate (i.e., it will operate correctly despite the presence of such nodes). ### Code available Whether the code implementing the system is publicly available. ### Committee How the participants work together to participate in the consensus protocol; either they all work together (single committee), or they are divided in multiple subgroups (multiple committees). ### Committee Formation How the members of the committee are chosen, for example via proof-of-work, proof-of stake, trusted hardware etc. ### Consistency The likelihood that the system will reach consensus on a proposed value; it can be either strong or weak. ### DoS resistance Resilience of the node(s) involved in consensus to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. If the participants of the consensus protocol are known in advance, an adversary may launch a DoS attack against them. ### Incentives The mechanisms that keep nodes motivated to participate in the system and follow its rules. • Inter-committee Configuration: How the members are assigned to the committee in a single committee setting; either members serve on the committee permanently (static), or they are changed at regular intervals (rolling, or full swap). ### Latency The time it takes from when a transaction is proposed until consensus has been reached on it. ### Leader The leader of the consensus protocol, which can be either elected among the current committee (internally), externally, or flexibly (e.g., through arbitrary smart contracts). ### Participants The nodes that participate in the consensus protocol. ### Permissioned blockchain Only participants selected by the appropriate authorities can participate in the consensus protocol. ### Permissionless blockchain Anyone can join the system and participate in the consensus protocol. ### Scalability The system’s ability to achieve greater throughput when consensus involves a larger number of nodes. ### Sharding Sharding aims to split (shard) state information across nodes, without requiring any node to have a full picture of the network. Therefore no validator will validate all shards. ### Throughput The maximum rate at which transactions can be agreed upon by the consensus protocol (transactions per second/hour). ### Transaction censorship resistance The system’s resilience to proposed transactions being suppressed (i.e., censored) by malicious node(s) involved in consensus. ### Zero Knowledge Proofs A Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that she knows a value X, without revealing the value itself.