Scalable byzantine fault-tolerant protocol with partial tee support

A computer readable medium comprising instructions for carrying out a method for establishing consensus between a plurality of distributed nodes connected via a data communication network, the plurality of distributed nodes including 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 comprising:

• preparing a set of random numbers, wherein each of the random numbers is a share of an initial secret, wherein each share of the initial secret corresponds to one of the plurality of active nodes;
• encrypting, in order to generate encrypted shares of the initial secret, each respective share of the initial secret with a shared key corresponding to respective one of the plurality of active nodes to which the respective share corresponds;
• applying a bitwise xor function to the set of random numbers to provide the initial secret;
• binding the initial secret to a last counter value to provide a commitment and a signature for the last counter;
• 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;
• binding the second secret to a second-to-last counter and each subsequent secret to a preceding counter to provide a commitment and a signature for the second-to-last counter and for each preceding counter;
• and
• transmitting, to each of the plurality of active nodes, the commitments and signatures for each of the counters along with the encrypted shares of the initial secret and a set of hash values produced by applying the hash function to the shares of the last secret,
• wherein each of the plurality of active nodes is configured to decrypt a corresponding encrypted share of the initial secret and to generate shares of the remaining secrets by applying the hash function to the decrypted share of the initial secret.