TRM-Raft: A Byzantine-Resistant Raft Consensus via Integrated Trust and Reputation Model

2026-07-09

AI Summary

This work addresses the vulnerability of the Raft consensus protocol to Byzantine faults—such as election manipulation and log tampering—given its original design only tolerates crash failures. While existing Byzantine fault-tolerant solutions often incur high overhead or lack a unified defense mechanism, this study proposes a lightweight enhancement that non-intrusively integrates a blockchain-based Trust and Reputation Model (B-TRM) into Raft. By quantifying multidimensional node behavior and embedding it into Raft’s leader election and log replication processes, the approach effectively distinguishes malicious actions from benign failures. Notably, it is the first to deeply integrate reputation mechanisms into Raft’s core logic, complemented by Schnorr signatures to ensure log integrity. Experimental results in a Hyperledger Fabric environment with 40% Byzantine nodes demonstrate that the proportion of malicious leaders drops below 5%, with throughput degradation under 10% and latency increase under 5%.

Abstract

Internetware envisions autonomous software entities collaborating over the open Internet. Raft consensus is widely adopted for its simplicity and performance in distributed coordination, e.g., service registries and blockchains. However, Raft assumes crash faults only, making it vulnerable to Byzantine behaviors like election forgery and log tampering. Existing BFT protocols incur high overhead, while ad-hoc hardening lacks unified defense. We propose \textbf{TRM-Raft}, a Byzantine-resistant enhancement that non-intrusively integrates a Blockchain-based Trust and Reputation Model (B-TRM) into the consensus core. It quantifies multi-dimensional node behaviors, applies adaptive penalties distinguishing accidental faults from malice, and embeds reputation into leader election and log replication. A reputation-aware election penalizes term/index forgery, excluding low-reputation nodes from leadership. A Schnorr-signature-based mechanism lets followers verify log integrity; tampering triggers reputation decay and leader replacement. Evaluated on Hyperledger Fabric in a realistic Internetware setting, TRM-Raft keeps malicious leader ratio below 5\% even with 40\% Byzantine nodes, with <10\% throughput loss and <5\% latency increase over vanilla Raft. TRM-Raft offers a lightweight, practical trustworthiness path for Internetware systems relying on Raft.

Problem

• Byzantine fault tolerance
• Raft consensus
• election forgery
• log tampering
• trust and reputation

Innovation

• Byzantine fault tolerance
• Raft consensus
• Trust and Reputation Model
• Schnorr signature
• Leader election