[Mathnerd314]

So, this is pretty difficult to test in a real-world environment, but I did a little LLM experiment. Two prompts, (A) "Implement a consensus algorithm for 3 nodes with 1 failure allowed." vs. (B) "Write a provably optimal distributed algorithm for Byzantine agreement in asynchronous networks with at least 1/3 malicious nodes". Prompt A generates a simple majority-vote approach and says "This code does not handle 'Byzantine' failures where nodes can act maliciously or send contradictory information." Prompt B generates "This is the simplified core consensus logic of the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) algorithm".

I would say, if you have to design a good consensus algorithm, PBFT is a much better starting point, and can indeed be scaled down. If you have to run something tomorrow, the majority-vote code probably runs as-is, but doesn't help you with the literature at all. It's essentially the iron triangle - good vs. cheap. In the talk the speaker was clearly aiming for quality above all else.