Description
TL;DR: The Fischer-Lynch-Paterson result: even one faulty process leaves every deterministic asynchronous consensus protocol with an execution that may never terminate.
About This Document
Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, and Michael S. Paterson formalize the consensus problem for asynchronous message-passing processes and show that no completely asynchronous deterministic protocol can guarantee both agreement and termination when even one process may fail. The report contrasts this result with synchronous Byzantine-agreement settings and carefully constructs the nontermination argument. This copy is the September 1982 Yale research-report version.
Why Bitcoin People May Care
Bitcoin did not repeal distributed-systems impossibility results. Its proof-of-work network makes different timing, probability, incentive, and finality tradeoffs rather than delivering ordinary deterministic consensus under every asynchronous execution. This pre-Bitcoin paper supplies foundational context for understanding why decentralized agreement is difficult before coins or blockchains enter the discussion.
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Document Details
- Title: Impossibility of Distributed Consensus with One Faulty Process
- Author / organization: Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, and Michael S. Paterson
- Year: 1982
- Language: English
- Document type: Technical report
- Pages: 17
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