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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.29

How Exhaustive Does an Extension-Based Proof Need to Be?

Authors: Faith Ellen, Shihao Liu, Leqi Zhu, Eli Gafni, and Rati Gelashvili

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 361, 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)

Abstract

The class of extension-based proofs encompasses traditional valency arguments. It has been shown that they are insufficient to establish the impossibility of (n-1)-set agreement among n ≥ 3 processes in an asynchronous system with crash failures. We generalize this definition to k-exhaustive extension-based proofs, in which a prover can learn the maximum length of all executions involving a set of at most k processes from a specified configuration (which may be infinite). An upper bound on the length of these executions enables the prover to determine the outputs of all these executions. When k = n, this enables the prover to perform an exhaustive search of all reachable configurations, so it knows everything about the protocol. On the other hand, extension based proofs are as powerful as 1-exhaustive extension-based proofs. For any task with no deterministic, wait-free solution among n ≥ 2 processes, we show that there is an (n-1)-exhaustive extension-based proof of its impossibility. This is done using a new characterization of such tasks. In contrast, we prove that for 1 ≤ k ≤ n-2, there is no k-exhaustive extension-based proof of the impossibility of (n-1)-set agreement.

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Faith Ellen, Shihao Liu, Leqi Zhu, Eli Gafni, and Rati Gelashvili. How Exhaustive Does an Extension-Based Proof Need to Be?. In 29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 361, pp. 29:1-29:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{ellen_et_al:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.29,
  author =	{Ellen, Faith and Liu, Shihao and Zhu, Leqi and Gafni, Eli and Gelashvili, Rati},
  title =	{{How Exhaustive Does an Extension-Based Proof Need to Be?}},
  booktitle =	{29th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2025)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-409-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{361},
  editor =	{Arusoaie, Andrei and Onica, Emanuel and Spear, Michael and Tucci-Piergiovanni, Sara},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-252020},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2025.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: Extension-based proof, set agreement, valency argument, zero-one exclusion}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.22

The Impossibility of Approximate Agreement on a Larger Class of Graphs

Authors: Shihao Liu

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 253, 26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022)

Abstract

Approximate agreement is a variant of consensus in which processes receive input values from a domain and must output values in that domain that are sufficiently close to one another. We study the problem when the input domain is the vertex set of a connected graph. In asynchronous systems where processes communicate using shared registers, there are wait-free approximate agreement algorithms when the graph is a path or a tree, but not when the graph is a cycle of length at least 4. For many graphs, it is unknown whether a wait-free solution for approximate agreement exists. We introduce a set of impossibility conditions and prove that approximate agreement on graphs satisfying these conditions cannot be solved in a wait-free manner. In particular, the graphs of all triangulated d-dimensional spheres that are not cliques, satisfy these conditions. The vertices and edges of an octahedron is an example of such a graph. We also present a family of reductions from approximate agreement on one graph to another graph. This allows us to extend known impossibility results to even more graphs.

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Shihao Liu. The Impossibility of Approximate Agreement on a Larger Class of Graphs. In 26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 253, pp. 22:1-22:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{liu:LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.22,
  author =	{Liu, Shihao},
  title =	{{The Impossibility of Approximate Agreement on a Larger Class of Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{26th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2022)},
  pages =	{22:1--22:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-265-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{253},
  editor =	{Hillel, Eshcar and Palmieri, Roberto and Rivi\`{e}re, Etienne},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.22},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-176420},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2022.22},
  annote =	{Keywords: Approximate agreement on graph, wait-free solvability, triangulated sphere}
}

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How Exhaustive Does an Extension-Based Proof Need to Be?

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The Impossibility of Approximate Agreement on a Larger Class of Graphs

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