Author: Natanael 2016-03-02 08:39:07
Published on: 2016-03-02T08:39:07+00:00
The author of a post on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list debunks the notion that Bitcoin is eventually consistent. Instead, the author argues that Bitcoin guarantees strong consistency. The definition of eventually consistent means that a computer system is running continuously and does not have a final state. Therefore, the system must be able to describe behavior when it may give responses to queries across time that are either perfectly consistent or not. However, Bitcoin by default does not ignore the contents of the last X blocks. A Bitcoin node being queried about the current blockchain state will give inconsistent answers when there are block rearrangements, indicating no strong consistency. Additionally, Bitcoin provides a probabilistic, accumulative probability, not a perfect one. Overall, the author hopes to dispel this false perception and lay the bad meme to rest.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T04:14:42.723136+00:00