Not to be too pedantic, but the step of actually shipping those changes across servers is usually outside the scope of consensus algorithms. Generally they are

Not to be too pedantic, but the step of actually shipping those changes across servers is usually outside the scope of consensus algorithms. Generally they are limited to picking a single server to act as a short-term leader. That server then is responsible for managing the data itself. Though you can conceive of a system where all data flows through the consensus algorithm, practically speaking that would introduce significant overhead at a granularity where it isn't adding value. There isn't neceasarily one dictator for the whole cluster, but rather usually they are scoped to each domain that requires serialization.