Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: Satoshi didn't solve the Byzantine generals problem
by
smooth
on 09/02/2016, 12:03:36 UTC
Just because you cannot quantify the number of traitors does not mean the system will produce invalid results within the bounds. This is true of any BGP consensus and has absolutely nothing to do with trustless, decentralised solutions.

For Christ's sake, you cause me to repeat all the points I made upthread over and over again.

I already explained to you invalid results where the observers can't know whether the state was attacked or not, which is a Byzantine fault! There is no way to compute this risk and in fact the asymptotic risk is 100% (probability = ~1) because all decentralized consensus systems must centralize (which I explained in detail upthread).

You keep linking that page, and you keep ignoring the statement on that page that says "assuming there are not too many faulty components"

I am not ignoring it. You are ignoring the point that the condition on count of traitors is unknowable from any sane engineering estimation and thus no state of the decentralized, trustless consensus system (Satoshi's variant when conjectured to be decentralized, trustless) can ever be distinguished from a Byzantine fault, regardless whether the condition threshold has been reached or not.

That is true even if you can estimate probabilities. There will still be some probability of faults (which may different from your possibly-incorrect estimate, but even if not) that exceed the tolerance and those are not detectable. Generals then charge off to their deaths.

And in reality, in the case of Bitcoin, you do estimate a probability (as being close to 1) and so does everyone else (a range, not all close to 1). That is at the root of why you think it is not a solution. It has nothing to do with the solution to the BGP, which is a mathematical construction that may or may not apply to Bitcoin (I still don't know).