Understanding Paxos and other distributed consensus algorithms (2202.06348v1)

Abstract: Paxos is a widely used and notoriously hard to understand method for solving one type of distributed consensus problem. This note provides a quick explanation of Paxos, a novel proof of correctness that is intended to provide insight into why the algorithm is as simple as the author has claimed, an explanation of why it does and why it doesn't work, and has a brief discussion of alternatives.