Synchronous Consensus with Optimal Asynchronous Fallback Guarantees

Typically, protocols for Byzantine agreement (BA) are designed to run in either a synchronous network (where all messages are guaranteed to be delivered within some known time \(\varDelta \) from when they are sent) or an asynchronous network (where messages may be arbitrarily delayed). Protocols designed for synchronous networks are generally insecure if the network in which they run does not ensure synchrony; protocols designed for asynchronous networks are (of course) secure in a synchronous setting as well, but in that case tolerate a lower fraction of faults than would have been possible if synchrony had been assumed from the start.

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