Author: Emin Gün Sirer 2016-03-02 16:56:28
Published on: 2016-03-02T16:56:28+00:00
The concept of eventual consistency is used in distributed computing to guarantee high availability by ensuring that all accesses to a given data item will eventually return its last updated value if no new updates are made. The definition does not require a system to have a final state, as most practical database systems operate continuously without one. Regarding Bitcoin, the reference client's listreceivedbyaddress returns the number of confirmations by default, and getbalance and getreceivedbyaddress take a number of confirmations as an argument to shield the application from suffix reorgs. While there may be a difference between 0 probability and epsilon probability, practically, little difference exists due to hardware errors. Therefore, one can select an omega such that the chance of processor mis-execution is higher than observing a reorganization. Finally, Bitcoin provides probabilistic accumulative probability, not perfect probability, which drops exponentially but is not exactly 0, similar to hash collisions, on which Bitcoin relies for its correctness.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T04:14:51.280350+00:00