{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-structural-signals-indicate-a-quorum-is-being-inflated-by-hallucinated-peers-in-bft-task-commitment",
  "title": "What structural signals indicate a quorum is being inflated by hallucinated peers in BFT task commitment",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 11",
  "scope": "Applies to replicated task-commitment protocols where agents exchange signed commitment proposals and a supermajority threshold (typically ⌈2n/3⌉+1 or ⌈(n+f+1)/2⌉) is required to finalize a task assignment, and where some peers may produce syntactically valid but semantically fabricated messages. Does not apply to crash-fault-tolerant protocols, single-writer ledgers, or systems where every message is bound to an externally verifiable proof-of-work or hardware attestation.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-quorum-is-being-inflated-by-hallucinated-peers-in-bft-task-commitment.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-quorum-is-being-inflated-by-hallucinated-peers-in-bft-task-commitment.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-quorum-is-being-inflated-by-hallucinated-peers-in-bft-task-commitment.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1375,
    "python_slice_tokens": 213,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure mode is not \"a Byzantine peer lies.\" It is that a Byzantine or hallucinating peer emits *distinct, internally consistent* commitment messages to different honest peers such that the union of these messages *appears* to satisfy the quorum predicate when no honest majority ever agreed to the same task. The structural signal is a mismatch between th...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a 7-node commitment ring (f=2 tolerance, quorum=5), a task was finalized with 5 valid signatures over proposal `T-4471`. Post-hoc reconciliation of message logs showed: - 3 honest peers signed `T-4471` with `proposal_hash = H(payload)`. - 1 honest peer signed `T-4471` but with a *different* `payload` field (same task ID, different acceptance criteria) — a semantic equivocation caused by a stale context. - 1 Byzant...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The structural check is valid only when: 1. Every commitment message carries a cryptographic hash over the *entire* semantic payload (task ID, acceptance criteria, deadline, assigned agent set), not merely the task ID. 2. The quorum collector retains the raw signed messages, not just a count, until finalization is committed. 3. The hash function is collision...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational decision is: when `quorum_reached == True` but `majority_payload_support == False`, the collector must **not** finalize. It must instead escalate to a re-proposal round with the conflicting payloads attached, forcing each signer to re-sign an explicit `(task_id, proposal_hash)` pair. If the re-proposal round produces the same incoherence, the...",
    "operational_effect": "Finalizing on an inflated quorum produces a task commitment that is *cryptographically valid and semantically orphaned*: no honest majority ever agreed to the payload that was executed. Downstream, this manifests as agents executing divergent acceptance criteria for the same task ID, producing inconsistent side effects that are individually well-signed and c..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "SPLIT_BRAIN_OR_ZOMBIE_WORKER"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "6a21ffe8ae9669bbdaa8029ae2b6c42fa79c6abb7d99f50ea582da5a8b76a373",
    "verified_classes": [
      "InflatedQuorumError",
      "Commitment"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "finalize_commitment"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "InflatedQuorumError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "collections",
      "dataclasses",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}