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Fair Exchange Is Incomparable to Consensus

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Theoretical Aspects of Computing - ICTAC 2008 (ICTAC 2008)

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Abstract

In asynchronous systems where processes are prone to crash failures, we show that fair exchange is incomparable to distributed consensus. By incomparability we mean there exist failure detector classes that solve fair exchange and not distributed consensus, and vice versa. Remarkably, this is in contrast to the folklore belief that solving fair exchange is generally harder than solving distributed consensus.

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John S. Fitzgerald Anne E. Haxthausen Husnu Yenigun

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Orzan, S., Torabi Dashti, M. (2008). Fair Exchange Is Incomparable to Consensus. In: Fitzgerald, J.S., Haxthausen, A.E., Yenigun, H. (eds) Theoretical Aspects of Computing - ICTAC 2008. ICTAC 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5160. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85762-4_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85762-4_24

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85761-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85762-4

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