Game Of Nodes — A Byzantine Generals Problem
By Katelyn Perna on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
**Note this contains some spoilers.
#TheThrones
GoT is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin’s series of fantasy novels, the first being A Game of Thrones. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and HBO created the fantasy drama television series which began airing on April 17, 2011. For the last 8 seasons (and years), this series has captured the universe.
Set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and the continent of Essos, the series chronicles the harsh and violent dynastic struggles among the noble families of the realm for the Iron Throne, while other families fight for Independence from it. The series captures the battle between good and evil incorporating magic, and dark fantasy concepts.
Blockchain Technology And How It Works
Blockchain is the biggest technology topic in 2019. Blockchain technology is an adaption from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 which gives users a decentralized way to own and manage their own information. Web 2.0 is the era of read/write internet where we can collaborate and share, but that information is owned by a central party such as a bank, or Facebook. Blockchain is the record keeping technology behind Bitcoin and by definition is a distributed, decentralized, public ledger.
At a basic level, blockchain is a chain of blocks where digital information is “the block” and the public database is “the chain”. Millions of transactions occur on any given blockchain and the special part of these transactions is that they must be verified. Making the transactions and their information secure and reliable. In more traditional or Web 2.0 systems, someone is in charge of vetting the new data entries or transactions. These are the centralized systems we are used to today. With blockchain technology, that job is done by a network of computers. When a transaction occurs, all the computers in the network immediately rush to verify the transaction happened by the right person and how it is supposed to happen. The details are confirmed around the person, time, dollar amount, etc.
We will focus on message authentication, unity, and fault tolerance which are the key components of blockchain based systems and consensus mechanisms used to verify the transactions.
Blockchain + GoT
If you understand GoT, you already understand blockchain. Let’s go back to the Seven Kingdoms in the realm for a second. We can imagine that the noblemen of the Seven Kingdoms are all one network in Westeros, and each Kingdom represents a node. Before any of the noblemen or women can make a decision, the Seven Kingdoms have to agree on that decision otherwise the execution of that decision cannot happen.
For example, in Season 1 when King Robert traveled to Winterfell to ask Ned Stark to be his Hand. On their way back to King’s Landing, Robert shared the news that Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of The Mad King, Aerys Targaryen, the last ruler of the Targaryen dynasty was alive and well and married to Khal Drogo of the Dothraki. Robert expressed his concern that she would bear children and come for the Iron Throne, of which he sat upon at the time. Robert’s decision was to find her and kill her, while Ned objected. This topic continued to cause friction among the two men and other leaders. Imagine that Robert’s decision had to be validated by all the other nodes (houses) in the Seven Kingdoms or else his transaction would be declined. No harm came to Dany in this instance, but it was behind the demise of the honorable Ned.
Message Authentication
MAC = message authentication code. This is a short piece of information that essentially confirms that a message came to the stated sender and had not been changed. Remember when Sansa was trapped in King’s Landing and Cersei was sending fake messages home on her behalf, citing how happy she was?
MAC value protects the messages data integrity as well as its authenticity, by allowing verifiers to detect any changes to the message content.
Luckily, Catelyn knew something was wrong inherently, but knowing whether messages were true and came from the said party would have saved some bloodshed.
There are many other instances of this throughout GoT, as being able to authenticate a message in times of war is of the utmost importance.
Unity
An important part of any blockchain network is unity. An agreement has to be established among all the participants (nodes or Kingdom leaders) before the network is even created. This comes from setting up a set of rules and logic, or a moral code, also known as a smart contract. If unity is established in the smart contract development phase, this will set the Kingdom up for success down the road. The smart contract is essentially business rules, but can also be seen as the guiding principles, or commandments if you will govern the Kingdom.
Fault-Tolerant
Fault tolerance is what enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure within one or more components. Essentially, it prevents an entire breakdown of the system. The consensus mechanisms make it possible for the entire network or Kingdom, to agree on the state, but there is always the possibility that agreement does not occur. This is why fault tolerance is an important part of the blockchain, and in GoT.
Blockchains are inherently designed to be fault-tolerant, meaning that consensus will still be achieved even when some members don’t act accordingly.
What Is The Byzantine Generals Problem?
This term comes from the computer science description of a situation where parties must agree on a single strategy in order to avoid complete failure, but where some of the parties are corrupt and sending around false information, making it otherwise unreliable. This is a super example of how Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm works.
Summary of the problem:
- Multiple noblemen need to agree on a coordinated plan of attack
- One or more noblemen may be traitors or have other motives
- All noblemen will abide by the majority decision but may try to influence it
If all the noblemen agree and stick together, they will be successful, if they do not, they will be destroyed.
Back to GoT.
In Season 8, Cersei refused to join the war against the dead and the Night King. The other houses stated that they would win if they all stuck together.
We know things didn’t work out for Cersei, but imagine if the Night King had prevailed and moved on down to King’s Landing to destroy the rest of the living? All of humanity in Westeros would have ceased to exist and there would be no memory of it either (remember, Bran has all the history).
Season 8, Episode 2, The Battle of Winterfell. The army of the living, sans Queen Cersei, takes on the White Walkers and the Night King. Dany, Jon, Sansa, Tyrion, and the rest of the leaders of the living decided on a specific strategy to withstand the attack and lure the Night King closer to the city walls. Once Dany’s beloved Dothraki was wiped out minutes into the battle, Dany let her emotions take over and took off on her dragon into the sky, abandoning her role to light fire in the trenches. Melisandre delivered in the clutch, but this a prime example where the single strategy became unreliable due to one party. In the blockchain world, once the algorithm cannot reach consensus the chain becomes broken making the transaction invalid, preventing complete destruction and chaos. Wouldn’t it have been great if Dany couldn’t have taken off on her dragon and not abandon her post? The fault tolerance would have enabled the battle to still go according to plan even though one member acted out of turn.
Another example of this occurs in Season 8, Episode 5, The Battle of King’s Landing. Before the battle, Tyrion encourages Dany to retreat once she hears the bells, signaling the city’s surrender. Dany does the opposite and destroys the entire city. Had a consensus algorithm prevented this, we might have been looking at a different outcome than what we got in the Season 8 Finale.
Dany needed the support of the Seven Kingdoms in order to be the ruler she dreamed of being. The need to “burn them all” at the end likely would not have occurred if an agreement was successfully achieved and needless to say the show would have likely yielded very different outcomes.
