--- title: Water Cooler Small Talk, Ep. 12: Byzantine Fault Tolerance description: Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is a system property enabling distributed systems to function correctly even when some nodes behave maliciously or... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/water-cooler-small-talk-ep-12-byzantine-fault-tolerance-a09vx2blv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Water Cooler Small Talk, Ep. 12: Byzantine Fault Tolerance | daily.dev og:description: Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is a system property enabling distributed systems to function correctly even when some nodes behave maliciously or... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/water-cooler-small-talk-ep-12-byzantine-fault-tolerance-a09vx2blv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/A09vx2Blv.png og:image:alt: Water Cooler Small Talk, Ep. 12: Byzantine Fault Tolerance og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Water Cooler Small Talk, Ep. 12: Byzantine Fault Tolerance **[Towards Data Science](https://daily.dev/sources/tds)** · 10 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is a system property enabling distributed systems to function correctly even when some nodes behave maliciously or unpredictably. Rooted in the 1982 Byzantine Generals Problem by Lamport, Shostak, and Pease, BFT requires at least 2/3 of nodes to be honest (n ≥ 3f+1). Bitcoin's Proof of Work sidestepped classical BFT by making cheating computationally infeasible, while Proof of Stake (used by Ethereum, Solana, Sui) returns closer to the classical BFT model by making Byzantine behavior economically costly through staked collateral. BFT principles extend beyond blockchain to distributed databases, aerospace systems, supply chains, and distributed AI training. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The RPC Delusion: Architecting Byzantine Fault Tolerance for Web3 Agents](https://daily.dev/posts/the-rpc-delusion-architecting-byzantine-fault-tolerance-for-web3-agents-ho6ocm9z6) · Coins Bench · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Surviving Byzantine Fire: Empirical Proof of a Deterministic Web3 AI Architecture](https://daily.dev/posts/surviving-byzantine-fire-empirical-proof-of-a-deterministic-web3-ai-architecture-qezechk4j) · Coins Bench · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [When doomed stubs attack: blockchain voting and proof of work — Bitfield Consulting](https://daily.dev/posts/when-doomed-stubs-attack-blockchain-voting-and-proof-of-work-bitfield-consulting-nx5ghgrzk) · Bitfield Consulting · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#blockchain](https://daily.dev/tags/blockchain), [#distributed-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/distributed-systems), [#proof-of-work](https://daily.dev/tags/proof-of-work) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/water-cooler-small-talk-ep-12-byzantine-fault-tolerance-a09vx2blv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Water Cooler Small Talk, Ep. 12: Byzantine Fault Tolerance","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/water-cooler-small-talk-ep-12-byzantine-fault-tolerance-a09vx2blv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/water-cooler-small-talk-ep-12-byzantine-fault-tolerance-a09vx2blv"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T13:31:56.834Z","dateModified":"2026-07-20T13:32:23.865Z","description":"Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) is a system property enabling distributed systems to function correctly even when some nodes behave maliciously or...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/55baedb1944e09f2a563504438ed12cf?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/55baedb1944e09f2a563504438ed12cf?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Towards Data Science","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Towards Data Science","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/tds","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tds"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/water-cooler-small-talk-ep-12-byzantine-fault-tolerance-a09vx2blv","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"blockchain,distributed-systems,proof-of-work","timeRequired":"PT10M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Towards Data Science","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tds"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Water Cooler Small Talk, Ep. 12: Byzantine Fault Tolerance"}]} ```