2019/12/03 by André Gaul, Gaul, André, Ismail Khoffi +5 · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Advanced Database Systems and Queries #C.2.4 #Distributed #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge #Parallel #and Cluster Computing (cs.DC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1912.01365
openalex publication_date 2019/12/03 · openalex created_date 2019/12/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We give an introduction to federated Byzantine agreement systems (FBAS) with many examples ranging from small "academic" cases to the current Stellar network. We then analyze the main concepts from a mathematical and an algorithmic point of view. Based on work of Lachowski we derive algorithms for quorum enumeration, checking quorum intersection, and computing the intact nodes with respect to a given set of ill-behaved (Byzantine) nodes. We also show that from the viewpoint of the intactness probability of nodes, which we introduce in this paper, a hierarchical setup of nodes is inferior to an arrangement that we call a symmetric simple FBAS. All algorithms described in this paper are implemented in the Python package Stellar Observatory, which is also used in some of the computed examples.