Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderMaelstrom [1], a workbench for learning distributed systems from the creator of Jepsen, includes a simple (model-checked) implementation of Raft and an excellent tutorial on implementing it. Raft is a simple algorithm, but as others have noted, the original paper includes many correctness details often brushed over in toy implementations. Furthermore, the fallibility of real-world hardware (handling memory/disk corruption and grey failures), the requirements of real-world systems with tight latency SLAs, and a…
Check out Alex Miller's Data Replication Design Spectrum for what you might use instead of Raft (for replication specifically), or what tweaks you might make to Raft for better throughput or space efficiency (for replication). https://transactional.blog/blog/2024-data-replication-design...
Popular past discussions: 2023 (343 points, 77 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37369826 2020 (81 points, 26 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23113419
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 554
- Total comments
- 122
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-05-20 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | devy | 4 | 0 |
| 2016-08-20 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | ffggvv | 3 | 0 |
| 2016-10-25 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | turrini | 7 | 0 |
| 2017-05-23 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | danielam | 2 | 0 |
| 2017-11-05 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | tosh | 3 | 0 |
| 2017-11-07 | Raft | tosh | 3 | 0 |
| 2018-01-04 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | lfischer | 3 | 0 |
| 2018-04-20 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | GordonS | 1 | 0 |
| 2019-08-06 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | tosh | 4 | 0 |
| 2020-03-01 | Raft Consensus Algorithm | pcr910303 | 4 | 0 |
| 2021-01-24 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | lnyan | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-08-07 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | ibobev | 2 | 0 |
| 2023-09-03 | The Raft Consensus AlgorithmFirst breakout · Best thread | oumua_don17 | 343 | 76 |
| 2025-04-16 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm | jcartw | 1 | 1 |
| 2025-08-13 | The Raft Consensus Algorithm (2015)Latest 20+ point return | nromiun | 171 | 45 |