Have you heard about the Byzantine general's problem? If yes, do you know about it? What is the Byzantine general's problem? If you don't know the answer, then you will have the answer to this question after reading this article.
What is the Byzantine general's problem?
The problem is a fictional narrative that shows the challenge of coordinating actions by communicating over untrusted links. In this matter, the two generals can communicate with each other only by sending messengers through enemy territory. The experiment asks how we can reach an agreement on when to attack, knowing that the messengers we send may be intercepted or untrusted.
The name of the concept comes from a 1982 paper illustrating the problem of distributed decision-making. The story describes a group of Byzantine generals of various sides trying to decide whether to attack or retreat. Messages between generals are relayed by messengers, but the problem is that some generals and some messengers may be traitors to the cause. Therefore, a loyal general must find a way to come to an agreement, even knowing that betrayal is possible.
The Byzantine fault is a condition of a computer system, especially a distributed computer system, in which components can fail and information about whether a component has failed is incomplete. In a decentralized network like Bitcoin, all participants and nodes are essentially on the same hierarchy.
As such, there is no need to reach a consensus between two parties, all participants must agree, but fraudulent or misleading participants are eliminated.
Blockchain's Solution to the Byzantine General's Problem
Solving the Byzantine general's problem is not easy. It requires some hashing, heavy computation, and communication between all nodes (generals) to verify the message. For this reason, Bitcoin uses "Byzantine Fault Tolerance" to generate hashcash-style proof-of-work (or mining) chains.
BGP can be applied to any distributed network. In fact, the Bitcoin network is even more complicated as there are no real generals or servers and all participants are nodes ("lieutenants"). All participating nodes must agree on all messages sent between them.
Even if a group of nodes has been corrupted, or the message that a node sends has been corrupted, the entire network has not yet been corrupted. Blockchain offers a solution to a common Byzantine problem by ensuring that the entire network must agree on all messages sent on the network. The Bitcoin blockchain reaches consensus through cryptographic hashing of a series of transactions and final proof-of-work verification. This is at the heart of blockchain strength and security. Achieve consensus across the blockchain network through the process of mining.
What is the Byzantine general's problem? : Blockchain's Solution To The Byzantine General's Problem, hopefully, this article can help you with understanding about Byzantine general's problem.
