Get the latest tech news

Lamport's Byzantine Generals Algorithm in Python

I discuss Lamport's Byzantine Generals problem and why it requires a total of N≥3M+1 nodes with M malicious nodes, and then implement the solution using Python with HTTP Flask servers.

It seems that the Byzantine Generals problem is (i) too complicated, (ii) the descriptions of the algorithm are too vague, and (iii) too sparsely discussed and implemented on the Internet — hence rare in its training data — so o3 can't get it right. By implementing Lamport's message cascade and majority vote logic in code, we see that the theoretical guarantees translate to a working system: every non-traitor node decides identically once the $M+1$ rounds of forwarding finish. Although the exponential message growth makes the algorithm impractical for large $M$, the exercise lays a clear foundation for understanding modern, more efficient Byzantine-fault-tolerant protocols.

Get the Android app