Consortium Blockchain
A permissioned blockchain jointly controlled and validated by a defined group of organizations, rather than a single company or an open, permissionless set of participants.
A consortium blockchain is a permissioned blockchain (see Kaavon's "Permissioned vs. Permissionless Blockchain" glossary definition) jointly controlled and validated by a defined group of separate organizations, rather than being operated entirely by a single company or openly validated by any permissionless participant. Member organizations typically agree in advance on governance rules, validation responsibilities, and who may join the consortium.
Consortium blockchains are commonly used for cross-organizational use cases — such as supply-chain tracking, interbank settlement, or shared industry record-keeping — where multiple independent organizations need a shared, tamper-evident ledger they can all trust, without any single participating organization needing to unilaterally control the entire system. The tradeoff compared to a fully public, permissionless blockchain is reduced openness and censorship resistance, in exchange for faster transaction processing, more predictable governance, and participants who are known, accountable entities rather than anonymous validators.
Examples
- A group of banks might jointly operate a consortium blockchain for interbank settlement, with each bank running a validating node under agreed-upon shared governance rules.
- A consortium blockchain trades some of a public blockchain's openness and censorship resistance for faster processing and governance among known, accountable organizations.