Re:My professional opinion as a blockchain researcher: I don...
by schoen on Monday February 12, 2018 @03:15PM
(#16361647)
I believe this is a terminological mistake. In the original formulation, all of the generals are "Byzantine" because they all work for the Byzantine Empire.
In the original paper by Lamport, Shostak, and Pease, the problem is described this way: "We imagine that several divisions of the Byzantine army are camped outside an enemy city, each division commanded by its own general. The generals can communicate with one another only by messenger. After observing the enemy, they must decide upon a common plan of action. However, some of the generals may be traitors, trying to prevent the loyal generals from reaching agreement."
A common way to describe the participants in such a scenario is simply "honest" and "dishonest". The term "Byzantine" has become used in distributed systems research to refer to situations in which we can't be sure of participants' honesty and intentions. However, it doesn't correctly refer only to the dishonest participants.
Re:My professional opinion as a blockchain researcher: I don...
by infinity0 on Tuesday February 13, 2018 @04:40AM
(#16365890)
My point still stands - are you going to punish people simply because you're "not sure" of their honesty? That is what the parent post (to my previous post) was implying.
In the original paper by Lamport, Shostak, and Pease, the problem is described this way: "We imagine that several divisions of the Byzantine army are camped outside an enemy city, each division commanded by its own general. The generals can communicate with one another only by messenger. After observing the enemy, they must decide upon a common plan of action. However, some of the generals may be traitors, trying to prevent the loyal generals from reaching agreement."
A common way to describe the participants in such a scenario is simply "honest" and "dishonest". The term "Byzantine" has become used in distributed systems research to refer to situations in which we can't be sure of participants' honesty and intentions. However, it doesn't correctly refer only to the dishonest participants.