In private blockchains, consensus isn't about reaching trust with strangers — it’s about maintaining control, speed, and reliability among known participants.

That’s why choosing the right consensus mechanism matters. Here’s a quick comparison of the most used ones in permissioned enterprise environments:

RAFT (Crash Fault Tolerance)

• Best For: Simpler enterprise systems needing high speed

• How it works: Elects a leader node to propose transactions

• Pros: Lightweight, fast, easy to implement

• Cons: Can’t handle malicious nodes — only fails if a node crashes

IBFT (Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance)

• Best For: Enterprises where trust among nodes is mostly intact but occasional faults or attacks are possible

• How it works: A group of validators reach agreement even if some act maliciously

• Pros: Byzantine fault tolerance with fast finality

• Cons: Higher overhead, limited scalability with many nodes

PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance)

• Best For: Mission-critical systems needing strong fault tolerance

• How it works: Multiple rounds of messaging between known nodes to reach consensus

• Pros: Very secure, resists malicious actors

• Cons: Network-heavy, not ideal for large validator sets

Choosing between RAFT, IBFT, and PBFT depends on your enterprise’s risk tolerance, trust assumptions, and scalability needs.
This is a core part of private blockchain development — not just how it runs, but how it reaches agreement.