This is a fork of version v0.38.19 of the official CometBFT repository, with changes made to permit
for benchmarks as part of the 'Asymmetric Grid Quorum Systems for Heterogeneous
Processes' paper, to be published at CCS 2026.
Changes involve:
- Adaptation of Tendermint consensus algorithm to support asymmetric quorum systems.
- Custom Docker container, suitable for use as part of a benchmark.
- Small bugfixes in utility to batch-create system configurations. These have since been merged to upstream.
There are three relevant branches in this repository:
main: Equal to themainbranch of upstream at the time when it was forked.baseline: Unmodified version of CometBFT, containing only required bugfixes and the benchmarking container.quorum-integration: Modified version of CometBFT, with added support for asymmetric generalized quorum systems.
The recommended way to use this repository is to build two versions of the
Docker container, one for the CometBFT baseline, and one for the modified
version supporting asymmetric trust. To do so, check out the appropriate
branch, build the container using the Dockerfile at benchmark/Dockerfile, and
publish it to a container registry of your choice. E.g. to build the baseline:
git checkout baseline
docker build -f benchmark/Dockerfile -t CHANGEME/tendergrid:ccs26-baseline .
docker push CHANGEME/tendergrid:ccs26-baseline
For convenience, we provide pre-built images of both versions in a public Dockerhub repository:
cryptobern/tendergrid:ccs26-baseline: Baseline of CometBFTcryptobern/tendergrid:ccs26-grid: With support for asymmetric quorum systems
What follows is the original README.md of CometBFT at the time of the fork.
Byzantine-Fault Tolerant State Machine Replication. Or Blockchain, for short.
| Branch | Tests | Linting |
|---|---|---|
| main |  |
 |
| v0.38.x |  |
 |
| v0.37.x |  |
 |
| v0.34.x |  |
 |
CometBFT is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) middleware that takes a state transition machine - written in any programming language - and securely replicates it on many machines.
It is a fork of Tendermint Core and implements the Tendermint consensus algorithm.
For protocol details, refer to the CometBFT Specification.
For detailed analysis of the consensus protocol, including safety and liveness proofs, read our paper, "The latest gossip on BFT consensus".
Complete documentation can be found on the website.
Please do not depend on main as your production branch. Use
releases instead.
If you intend to run CometBFT in production, we're happy to help. To contact us, in order of preference:
- Create a new discussion on GitHub
- Reach out to us via Telegram
- Join the Cosmos Network Discord and
discuss in
#cometbft
More on how releases are conducted can be found here.
To report a security vulnerability, see our bug bounty program. For examples of the kinds of bugs we're looking for, see our security policy.
| CometBFT version | Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| main | Go version | Go 1.22 or higher |
| v0.38.x | Go version | Go 1.22 or higher |
| v0.37.x | Go version | Go 1.22 or higher |
| v0.34.x | Go version | Go 1.12 or higher |
See the install guide.
Please abide by the Code of Conduct in all interactions.
Before contributing to the project, please take a look at the contributing guidelines and the style guide. You may also find it helpful to read the specifications, and familiarize yourself with our Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) and Request For Comments (RFCs).
CometBFT uses Semantic Versioning to determine when and how the version changes. According to SemVer, anything in the public API can change at any time before version 1.0.0
To provide some stability to users of 0.X.X versions of CometBFT, the MINOR version is used to signal breaking changes across CometBFT's API. This API includes all publicly exposed types, functions, and methods in non-internal Go packages as well as the types and methods accessible via the CometBFT RPC interface.
Breaking changes to these public APIs will be documented in the CHANGELOG.
In an effort to avoid accumulating technical debt prior to 1.0.0, we do not guarantee that breaking changes (i.e. bumps in the MINOR version) will work with existing CometBFT blockchains. In these cases you will have to start a new blockchain, or write something custom to get the old data into the new chain. However, any bump in the PATCH version should be compatible with existing blockchain histories.
For more information on upgrading, see UPGRADING.md.
Because we are a small core team, we have limited capacity to ship patch updates, including security updates. Consequently, we strongly recommend keeping CometBFT up-to-date. Upgrading instructions can be found in UPGRADING.md.
Currently supported versions include:
- v0.38.x: CometBFT v0.38 introduces ABCI 2.0, which implements the entirety of ABCI++
- v0.37.x: CometBFT v0.37 introduces ABCI 1.0, which is the first major step towards the full ABCI++ implementation in ABCI 2.0
- v0.34.x: The CometBFT v0.34 series is compatible with the Tendermint Core v0.34 series
- Cosmos SDK; A framework for building applications in Golang
- Tendermint in Rust
- ABCI Tower
Below are links to the original Tendermint consensus algorithm and relevant whitepapers which CometBFT will continue to build on.
- The latest gossip on BFT consensus
- Master's Thesis on Tendermint
- Original Whitepaper: "Tendermint: Consensus Without Mining"
CometBFT is currently maintained by Informal Systems. If you'd like to work full-time on CometBFT, we're hiring!
Funding for CometBFT development comes primarily from the Interchain Foundation, a Swiss non-profit. Informal Systems also maintains cometbft.com.