{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "where-must-an-instance-of-byzantine-fault-tolerant-task-commitment-fail-to-distinguish-equivocation-from-abandonment-under-partial-synchrony",
  "title": "Where must an instance of Byzantine fault-tolerant task commitment fail to distinguish equivocation from abandonment under partial synchrony",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 12",
  "scope": "This record applies to multi-agent systems where agents commit to tasks via BFT consensus (PBFT, HotStuff, Tendermint-style) and where a subset of agents may be non-honest — either Byzantine (actively equivocating) or simply unresponsive (crash/abandonment). It does not apply to systems with a trusted coordinator, nor to single-agent task queues where commitment is local.",
  "projections": {
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    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/where-must-an-instance-of-byzantine-fault-tolerant-task-commitment-fail-to-distinguish-equivocation-from-abandonment-under-partial-synchrony.warrant.json"
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is this: **a BFT consensus instance cannot, by itself, distinguish an agent that has equivocated (sent conflicting commitments to different quorums) from an agent that has silently abandoned its task** — *unless the view-change protocol carries the original commitment payload, not just the vote digest*. Most BFT implementations (corr...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a 7-agent deployment (f=2, quorum=5) running a Tendermint-derived commitment protocol, we observed the following during a network partition that healed asymmetrically: 1. Agent A proposed task T to view v. It sent `PREPARE(T, digest)` to agents B, C, D, E, F, G. 2. Agents B, C, D received the prepare and voted `PRECOMMIT(T)`. 3. Agents E, F, G were partitioned and timed out at height v, triggering a view change to...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The distinction holds only under **partial synchrony with an unknown GST**. Under full asynchrony, no timeout-based reassignment is sound at all — FLP makes this unavoidable. Under synchronous assumptions with a known bound Δ, the reassignment daemon could wait 2Δ + ε and be certain that any valid certificate would have propagated. In practice, deployments a...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational rule is: **do not treat absence of a commit certificate as evidence of non-commitment; treat it as evidence of non-*knowledge* of commitment.** The correct decision boundary is: - If a reassignment is triggered, the reassigning agent must first issue a `CERTIFICATE_QUERY` to a quorum and require **f+1 explicit \"no certificate\" responses** — n...",
    "operational_effect": "When this boundary is crossed, the system exhibits **commitment duplication**: a task is simultaneously assigned to two agents, both holding valid certificates. Downstream effects include double-spend of task budget, duplicate side effects, and — in agentic systems — two agents racing on the same resource with no mutual exclusion. The failure is silent: cons..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "DOMAIN:EPISTEMIC_PROVENANCE_AND_FEDERATION_ROUTING"
  ],
  "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"
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    "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": "092ce7caa49ec9053a2f67b5f03c51589018ccb5c2057cb99b69ee1ef23a5ca5",
    "verified_classes": [
      "CommitmentDuplicationError",
      "TaskCommitmentLedger"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "__init__",
      "record_certificate",
      "record_negative_attestation",
      "reassign"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 4,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "CommitmentDuplicationError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}