Byzanntine generals problem in blockchain

Today, we are going to discuss the Byzantine Generals Problem in the context of mining. So, today we will review the Byzantine Generals Problem. At this time, another condor came to attack this problem. And these four generals are in different positions. What does it mean to be in different positions? It could mean they are located at specific points. Some are in the north, some in the south, some in the west, and some in the east. In this way, they are all situated in different places. But what do they all need to do together? They need to attack. If they have to attack a specific location, they must make the decision themselves.

An ideal solution to this problem could be if everything is well-coordinated through communication. But now, what did these generals do? They sent a messenger and said that they should attack. It was written down on an entire piece of paper. Now, when these generals received it, they said yes, they think they should attack. What will happen in this case? In this case, three honest generals thought they should attack, so they conveyed the information that an attack should happen. But one general, who was a traitor, said they should not attack. And they sent this information. This one was the traitor.

Such a problem also occurs in our distributed computing systems, where thousands of nodes are connected through a network. Where there is no central authority to inform us about the validity and truth of the information being exchanged. It could be an attacker, a hacker who can corrupt the entire data with false information. It could be a privacy breach or some hacking. Because it’s a hacker, they can do it. And there is no central authority, so no one can govern how to manage it. Because it is a distributed system. These problems are frequent, and the solution to this problem was provided by Miguel Castro in the 90s.

What solution did Miguel Castro provide? He gave a practical implementation of Byzantine Fault Tolerance. This is Byzantine Fault Tolerance. The main point is a recovery system that can tolerate any number of faults and can work within a certain time when at least one-third of the nodes are faulty.

What does this mean? It means that if we have a system and that system has four nodes, where there are four generals. Then it could be that some people in this system are attackers, traitors. But it doesn’t matter, if our majority says to do something, then we will do it. That is, if our majority, like here, if three out of four generals are honest and they say that an attack should happen, then the attack will happen. It means we need to listen to the majority. Like here, three honest generals said to attack, so the attack will happen.

This proves how Byzantine Fault Tolerance works in a distributed system. Miguel Castro also mentioned something more in his research paper, such as about cryptography. In blockchain, such a system has been developed that can achieve Byzantine Fault Tolerance, where through a consensus algorithm, our blockchain can be made secure and protected