# Introducing Meerkat: Cloudflare’s Global Consensus Experiment

Meerkat enhances consistency and accessibility in distributed systems.

- **Source:** [Cloudflare Blog](https://blog.cloudflare.com)
- **Published:** 2026-07-08
- **Topic:** [Software & Engineering](https://brifing.si/c/engineering)
- **Original article:** <https://blog.cloudflare.com/meerkat-introduction/>
- **On Brifing:** https://brifing.si/s/b97c4c5a-36ca-4cf9-a2f7-53af6790b02f

## Purpose of Meerkat

Cloudflare is developing the Meerkat project to ensure a consistent and accessible control plane across global data centers, aiming to make the system resilient to any disruptions.

## Global Data Challenges

Systems operating over the internet struggle with consistency due to outages and delays, posing a significant challenge for Cloudflare’s global network.

## Limitations of Raft Algorithm

Commonly used consensus algorithms like Raft rely on a leader-based approach, causing system unavailability during network outages.

## Innovation of QuePaxa

The QuePaxa algorithm allows all replicas to perform write operations and eliminates timeout issues, making it an ideal solution for Cloudflare’s network.

## Structure of Meerkat

Meerkat is a consensus service built on the QuePaxa algorithm, marking the first industrial application of QuePaxa at a global scale.

## Control Plane Data

Many Cloudflare services require reading and writing control plane data, which includes critical information for the system’s correct operation.

## Consistency Levels

Consistency levels in distributed systems determine how the system behaves during concurrent read and write operations. Cloudflare prefers the strongest consistency level, linearizability.

## Fault Tolerance

Meerkat is designed to be resilient to faults like network outages and machine crashes, ensuring continuous system availability.

## Key-Value Store

Meerkat runs applications like a key-value store on top of its consensus service, enhancing the system’s flexibility and usability.

## Next Steps

Meerkat is currently in development and will be used to manage small control plane data. Plans are in place to expand its use cases in the future.

## Industrial Application

Meerkat will be the first industrial application of the QuePaxa algorithm at a global scale, reinforcing Cloudflare’s technological leadership.

## Conclusion and Importance

Meerkat enhances consistency and accessibility in global distributed systems, making Cloudflare’s services more reliable. This project is a significant step for future technological advancements.

## Sources covering this story

- https://blog.cloudflare.com/meerkat-introduction/ — 

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_Summary written by Brifing from the original reporting. Copyright in the original article belongs to its publisher; read the full piece at the link above._