Byzantine Fault Tolerance Overhead

Byzantine Fault Tolerance Overhead represents the additional time and resource consumption required to ensure an oracle network can reach consensus even if some nodes are malicious or offline. This overhead is a necessary cost for security, as it requires multiple rounds of communication and verification to confirm data accuracy.

The more resilient the network needs to be, the higher the overhead, which can directly impact the speed of data delivery. Understanding this trade-off is vital for developers, as they must choose a BFT configuration that provides adequate security without making the oracle too slow for their specific use case.

It is a core concept in the study of protocol physics and decentralized system design.