DMPE: A Deterministic Multi-Criteria Proposer-Election State Machine for Permissioned Dis tributed Systems

Abstract

Leader selection strongly affects performance and reliability in permissioned networks. Existing mechanisms rely on static schedules or protocol-specific reputation, limiting portable observation- driven selection across heterogeneous consensus engines. This paper presents DMPE, a modular preprocessing layer for proposer election. From an immutable snapshot of finalized history it applies eligibility filtering, pairwise multi criteria comparison, Borda aggregation, and hashed tie resolution, returning a unique proposer identifier without consensus messages. The same pure kernel is consumed unchanged by local Clique-, IBFT-, and HotStuff-style engine consumers (interface compatibility;not full networked replicas).Determinism holds under single-process,multi-container, and two physical LAN hosts (=20, ∈{16, 32}, =200; zero mismatches). The primary contribution is the modular proposer-interface contract and its deterministic realisation; ranking-aligned quality metrics are secondary evidence. On a permissioned PoA harness up to =100, production-path election stays below 1.02 msand pure-path below 50 s, with tens of microseconds and kilobytes per election. Relative to Clique on ranking-aligned metrics, pool quality rises from 0.386 to 0.445 and below-median mass falls from 4.08 to 0.67. Synthetic finalisation models and a local commit-outcome pilot remain construct-level only, not live multi-host committraces. Headline figures remain single-host or controlled-harness results;wide-area finality and Byzantine observation attacks remain outside the present claims.