US Patent 11546145 Scalable byzantine fault-tolerant protocol with partial tee support

A method is provided for preparing a plurality of distributed nodes to perform a protocol to establish a consensus on an order of received requests. The plurality of distributed nodes includes a plurality of active nodes, the plurality of active nodes including a primary node, each of the plurality of distributed nodes including a processor and computer readable media. The method includes preparing a set of random numbers, each being a share of an initial secret. Each share of the initial secret corresponds to one of the plurality of active nodes. The method further includes encrypting each respective share of the initial secret, binding the initial secret to a last counter value to provide a commitment and a signature for the last counter value, and generating shares of a second and of a plurality of subsequent additional secrets by iteratively applying a hash function to shares of each preceding secret.