Search

This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) of blockchain consensus mechanisms, an essential protocols that maintain the integrity, reliability, and decentralization of distributed ledger networks. The aim is to comprehensively investigate prominent mechanisms' security features and vulnerabilities, emphasizing their security considerations, applications, challenges, and future directions. The existing literature offers valuable insights into various consensus mechanisms' strengths, limitations, and security vulnerabilities and their real-world applications. However, there remains a gap in synthesizing and analyzing this knowledge systematically. Addressing this gap would facilitate a structured approach to understanding consensus mechanisms' security and vulnerabilities comprehensively. The study adheres to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and computer science standards and reviewed 3749 research papers from 2016 to 2024, excluding grey literature, resulting in 290 articles for descriptive analysis. The research highlights an increased focus on blockchain consensus security, energy efficiency, and hybrid mechanisms within 60% of research papers post-2019, identifying gaps in scalability, privacy, and interoperability for future exploration. By synthesizing the existing research and identifying the key trends, this SLR contributes to advancing the understanding of blockchain consensus mechanisms' security and guiding future research and structured innovation in blockchain systems and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]