Byzantine generals’ problem

To understand the byzantine generals’ problem, let us go through a story.

Once there was a kingdom whose major seven chieftains decided to attack a neighboring state. The plan was prepared to seize the fort from all directions and after coordinating and giving signals, the fort has to be pounced under the leadership of all chieftains from all directions in order to win the war. But among the seven, two were traitors who delayed the signal and does not give an indication of attack at the right time. As a result due to an uncoordinated signal, the attack has abstained and they lost.

This exactly demonstrates the problem in the distributed system. The problem of incoordination.

Decentralized systems struggle to come to a consensus on a single fact, as illustrated by the Byzantine Generals Problem.

So here the key issues involved are that the chieftains communicate by messenger to decide on a common course of action in which all battalions work together and launch simultaneous attacks from all directions in order to be successful. Traitors will likely attempt to disrupt their goal by intercepting or altering the transmissions. This challenge’s goal is for all of the loyal commanders to come to an agreement without interference from the pretenders.

The Byzantine Generals issue, which demands that truth be validated in a transparent manner, cannot be solved by centralized systems because they offer no transparency, which increases the risk of data tampering.

The same situation occurs in a decentralized system such as the blockchain.

What we know so far is that Blockchain is a decentralized, open ledger that stores all transactional data. The Bitcoin network’s nodes, or users, might establish a working, decentralized financial system without the need for a central authority provided they could all agree on the transactions that took place and in what order. Blockchain largely relies on a consensus approach to validate transactions because of its decentralized nature. It is a peer-to-peer network that provides users with trust and transparency. What distinguishes it from other systems is its distributed ledger. Any system that needs accurate verification can use blockchain technology. But as there is verification and consensus, it poses the same byzantine general problem. What if some nodes give a false verification result intentionally calling into question the credibility of the system?

By using a Proof-of-Work method to establish a precise, impartial regulation for the blockchain, Bitcoin overcame the Byzantine General’s Problem. A cryptocurrency’s blockchain can be updated with new transaction blocks using the proof of work (PoW) technique. The job in this case is to generate a hash (a lengthy string of characters) that corresponds to the desired hash for the current block.

Proof-of-Work encourages miners to broadcast accurate information and so protects the network by making them spend a lot of time and money to create blocks. Of course, the miners who spend this much resources to get the award for mining a transaction would not indulge in malicious work. One of the few methods for a decentralized network to concur on a single source of truth, which is necessary for a monetary system, is through Proof-of-Work. The rules on the blockchain network are objective, thus there can be no disagreement or tampering with the data. This is a counterfeit-resistant technique in the blockchain. This overcomes security concerns making the system more credible and accountable.

Also, a block is extremely difficult to remove from the blockchain after it has been uploaded, making Bitcoin’s past unchangeable. This is the immutability of the blockchain. As a result, users of the blockchain network may always concur on the blockchain’s current status and all of its transactions. Hence it is a provable system.

Furthermore, All network nodes instantly identify any effort to broadcast false information as objectively invalid and ignore it. It is unnecessary to place your trust in other network participants because every node on the Bitcoin network is capable of verifying every piece of information on the network, making Bitcoin a trustless system.

And this is how byzantine generals’ issue solves in the blockchain systems.