Embodiments of this specification provide a consensus node changing method and apparatus based on a Honey Badger Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanism. The method includes: when receiving a transaction for changing a blockchain's consensus node, executing, by a consensus node of the blockchain, the transaction to trigger a smart contract to update a consensus node configuration list of the blockchain, where the consensus node configuration list includes serial numbers allocated to consensus nodes based on a serial number allocation rule specified by the smart contract; associating, by the consensus node based on serial numbers of consensus nodes recorded in the updated consensus node configuration list, another consensus node of the blockchain with at least two state machines locally configured in the consensus node, where each of the state machines is configured with states corresponding to a consensus phase in the Honey Badger BFT consensus mechanism and configured to perform state switching based on a control signal to perform a consensus operation specified by the consensus phase corresponding to a current state of the state machine; and processing, by the consensus node based on the state machines that have been configured locally, a consensus proposal initiated by one or more of the other consensus nodes associated with the state machines.