Recently, the so-called tech behemoth Microsoft has included new consensus protocol called Proof-of-Authority to its Azure platform. In fact, this was one of the protocols already supported by Ethereum and being used in the VeChain blockchain.
It is well-known fact that, most of the blockchain space leverage the traditional Proof-of-work concept. But with Proof-of-Authority(PoA), the mining process is efficient and maintains high levels of security. Also, this is essentially very much suitable for private/consortium network.
As explained on the official blog of Microsoft Azure,
“Proof-of-Work is a Sybil-resistance mechanism that leverages computation costs to self-regulate the network and allow fair participation[..]An alternative protocol, Proof-of-Authority, is more suitable for permissioned networks where all consensus participants are known and reputable.”
The added advantage of using the concept of PoA is that “each consensus participant to delegate multiple nodes to run on their behalf“. Thereby it ensures that even if one node goes down, a consensus authority can still maintain its presence on the network. On the same lines, Azure Engineer Born explained that,
“ Each Azure Proof-of-Authority network comes with our identity leasing system that ensures that no two nodes carry the same identity. In the case of a VM or regional outage, new nodes can quickly spin up and resume the previous nodes’ identities.“
As per feedback from Microsoft’s customer’s more and more people are interested in participating consortium but not to handle the entire network infrastructure. To overcome this Microsoft has released Governance DApp along with Proof-of-Authority
Earlier this year we have seen Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Workbench – a tool designed to streamline the process for enterprises building decentralized applications on the cloud computing platform. Followed by this PoA has been released.
Well, what do you think of this new protocol on Azure platform? How much might this help at the enterprise level? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
