[jaekwon]

Yes, there were many designs.

I don't know of anyone who really applied traditional BFT networks into public blockchain architecture, however, until Tendermint.

For example, who spoke or wrote of BFT fault accountability/attribution, and how it pertains to proof-of-stake models, before Tendermint?

There was also the 2011 paper that lamented the lack of good open-source middleware for BFT algos. Tendermint solves that engineering problem as well.