Abstract: Blockchains operate as decentralized, self-regulating systems that involve contributions from hundreds of thousands of participants who work on the verification and authentication of transactions occurring on the blockchain. The consensus mechanism within such a system provides the set of rules that determine the legitimacy of contributions made by the various participants of the blockchain. The consensus mechanism should not only be tolerant of faults but also have low latency in establishing consensus. Prior art solutions either could tolerate at most (n+1)/5 faults reaching consensus or execution of three or more communication steps to provide tolerance of arbitrary (Byzantine) faults or cannot guarantee strong safety property for an honest primary. To improve the speed of the consensus mechanism the inventors have established a BFT consensus protocol that operates with just two communication steps.