From Traditional Fault Tolerance to Blockchain

This book covers the most essential techniques for designing and building dependable distributed systems, from traditional fault tolerance to the blockchain technology. Topics include checkpointing and logging, recovery-orientated computing, replication, distributed consensus, Byzantine fault tolerance, as well as blockchain.

This book intentionally includes traditional fault tolerance techniques so that readers can appreciate better the huge benefits brought by the blockchain technology and why it has been touted as a disruptive technology, some even regard it at the same level of the Internet. This book also expresses a grave concern on using traditional consensus algorithms in blockchain because with the limited scalability of such algorithms, the primary benefits of using blockchain in the first place, such as decentralization and immutability, could be easily lost under cyberattacks.

Dr. Zhao received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2002. He is a full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Cleveland State University. Dr. Zhao has been doing research in the area of dependable distributed systems for more than two decades. His research has been sponsored by the US federal and state agencies such as US National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy (DoE), the US Department of Transportation, and the Ohio Department of Higher Education. Dr. Zhao is currently working on a blockchain-related project supported by DoE. Dr. Zhao has more than 200 academic publications. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Access and MDPI Computer. He regularly gives keynote speeches and tutorials in various international conferences.