Fault tolerance · 1982 · Leslie Lamport, Robert Shostak & Marshall Pease
The Byzantine Generals Problem
Model contradictory, adversarial failure explicitly and derive the conditions under which correct processes can still agree.
The central move
Model contradictory, adversarial failure explicitly and derive the conditions under which correct processes can still agree.
Why it had to exist
Crash failures are simple compared with a component that tells different peers different stories. Reliable distributed control required precise agreement and validity properties.
Where it leads
Byzantine agreement → replicated state machines → blockchains and adversarial distributed services.