Don’t Roll Your Own Consensus

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Rolling Your Own Consensus is clearly the blockchain version of Rolling Your Own Crypto.
Reasons for doing so that I have seen include,
  • • I have a Better Way To Do Things (No. You don’t.)
  • • It shouldn’t be hard, therefore it isn’t (Why? also, Yes, it is.)
  • • What could possibly go wrong? (Yup)
  • • We’re on AWS, so net-splits aren’t a thing (Oh yes they are)
  • • Or outages (Ha. ha. ha. ha. ha)
  • • Who cares what the academics think, this is the real world (Yikes)
  • • We use redis for co-ordination (Sigh)
  • • Actually, redis-cluster (Double sigh)
Next time you’re faced with one of these, I recommend running away. Immediately. With vigor.
Mind you, if you can’t run away, try asking some combination of
  • 1) Is it proven?
  • 2) Really?
  • 3) With Math?
  • 4) And peer-reviewed papers?
For extra credit, ask if they redid Paxos or Raft, without the un-necessary parts.And then, run away. Immediately. With vigor.

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