State Machine Replication Revisited as the Root of Blockchain Technology

Discussions around blockchain technology are increasingly connecting to State Machine Replication (SMR). The decentralized consensus that emerged after Bitcoin is described as a continuation of research in distributed systems from the 1980s and 1990s. Andreessen Horowitz released a video on June 19 titled 'First Principles,' featuring a discussion between MIT professor Barbara Liskov and other experts. The conversation emphasized the perspective of viewing blockchain as 'wild state machine replication.' State machine replication is a method where multiple computers execute the same commands in the same order, relating to transaction records, validators, and consensus procedures in blockchain. Professor Liskov's research contributed to the design and implementation of the CLU and Argus languages, and she is currently interested in Byzantine fault-tolerant storage systems. The Andreessen Horowitz video explained the flow from CLU and Argus to PBFT. PBFT is an algorithm designed to ensure that the system maintains service even if some servers provide incorrect responses. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also connects state machine replication to blockchain, defining the issue in NIST IR 8460 draft as the challenge of unreliable processes mimicking centralized services in a distributed and fault-tolerant manner. A key point of discussion is that blockchain did not invent state machine replication. This conversation serves as educational content explaining the roots of blockchain technology, though direct market reactions have not been confirmed.

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