1. An apparatus, comprising: a memory; and a processing device operatively coupled to the memory and configured to: separate a first consensus protocol into one or more communication steps, wherein the first consensus protocol is useable to substantially maintain data consistency between nodes in a distributed computing system, and wherein a communication step comprises a message transfer, attributable to the first consensus protocol, in the distributed computing system; and compute an estimated protocol-level delay based on one or more attributes associated with the separated communication steps of the first consensus protocol.