Exactly this, not sure why people think it's a different thing - just wrap nodes into a higher level of abstraction. I believe Raft might be a better approach t

Exactly this, not sure why people think it's a different thing - just wrap nodes into a higher level of abstraction. I believe Raft might be a better approach to scalable consensus tho but there needs to be more layers to a network so the network can be more self-balancing and localised. If we we call "heartbeat" the frequency at which a node is synced to the network (achieves consensus) - lower heartbeat nodes need to stay close only to nodes with a "heartbeat" faster than theirs and elect leaders in that group. The leaders in that group are also in a group of other leaders of that layer and listening to their leader, which belongs to a group above (like zooming out from a group and the group becoming a node in a larger graph). In the end, there is only one state after all and the graph is the ultimate leader with the highest heartbeat. We wouldn't need many layers to cover all nodes, assuming laws of nature and all. Then just go a layer up/down if the network is getting too large, use a karmic system to position new/reactivated nodes. Seems scalable enough. Sorry OP, it might be too early and I'm just thinking out loud in a comment box.