Paxos-based Weighted Argumentation Framework Approach to Distributed Consensus

Paxos is regarded as one of the most important protocols for distributed consensus in the presence of failures. It uses a number of 2f+1 processes to tolerate the benign failure of f processes, by splitting them into different roles with tailored tasks. The protocol presents multiple engineering challenges, two of which are pinpointing the cause for stalling and identifying the faulty processes. In this paper, we propose an alternative solution based on weighted argumentation frameworks by introducing Distributed Dispute Trees and a new role (the Skeptic) which ensures safety by attacking each condition that is not met in the Paxos protocol. The other processes must collaborate to defeat the Skeptic and achieve consensus.