arXiv:2607.16109cs.LGcs.DC2026-07

提出新型容错模型,应对智能体系统因推理错误导致的语义不一致问题。

The Honest Quorum Problem: Epistemic Byzantine Fault Tolerance for Agentic Infrastructure

  • 引入认知故障概念,区分协议合规与语义正确性
  • 定义 $e_δ$ 与 $u_ε$ 两个指标,分别量化语义风险与可用性退化
  • 揭示共享模型的智能体易产生共现故障,需针对性校准

状态机复制(SMR)和拜占庭容错(BFT)共识可在有限数量恶意参与者下保证一致性,但前提是外部参与方正确执行协议转换语义。在智能体验证者场景中,即使认证、响应、不矛盾且协议合规的参与者,仍可能因推理错误支持语义无效的转换。这种故障称为认知故障,其集体表现即为「诚实多数问题」(“诚实”指协议合规,非语义正确)。此类多数虽通过常规检查,却可生成无效转换的证明。因此,仅保证一致性无法确保语义有效性或执行安全。由于智能体常共享模型权重、训练分布、提示词或工具链,易出现相关性认知故障。本文提出认知拜占庭容错(EBFT),适用于智能体基础设施与后确定性分布式系统。EBFT在传统拜占庭容错边界外增加两个独立、置信度加权的量:$e_δ$ 表示非拜占庭集内一致无效支持上限,$u_ε$ 表示不可用支持对活性的损害。这两个量独立刻画语义安全风险与活性退化。我们推导出语义有效性、共识一致、活性及阈值选择的准条件,并提出估算预算的校准方法。结果表明,仅当新增智能体显著降低无效支持的尾部集中度时,才真正提升容错能力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

State machine replication (SMR) and Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus guarantee agreement despite a bounded number of arbitrary, colluding faulty participants. However, these guarantees rely on participants outside this set correctly executing the protocol's transition semantics. Agentic validators expose a weaker boundary: an authenticated, responsive, non-equivocating, and protocol-compliant reasoning participant may still endorse a semantically invalid transition due to reasoning errors. We call this failure mode an epistemic fault, and the collective phenomenon the Honest Quorum Problem (where "honest" means protocol-compliant, not semantically correct). Such a quorum can satisfy ordinary checks while forming a certificate for an invalid transition. Thus, agreement alone does not guarantee semantic validity or execution safety. Furthermore, because agentic validators often share model weights, training distributions, prompts, or toolchains, they are highly susceptible to correlated epistemic faults. We define Epistemic Byzantine Fault Tolerance (EBFT), a fault-tolerance model for agentic infrastructure and post-deterministic distributed systems. EBFT augments the conventional Byzantine fault bound with two separate, confidence-indexed quantities: $e_δ$ bounds coherent invalid endorsements outside the Byzantine set, and $u_ε$ bounds unusable validator support that degrades liveness. These quantities characterize semantic safety risk and liveness degradation independently. We derive quorum-threshold conditions for semantic validity, consensus agreement, liveness, and feasible threshold selection, and outline a calibration methodology for estimating these budgets. We show that adding nominally distinct agents improves fault tolerance only when it measurably reduces the upper-tail concentration of invalid endorsements or unusable support.

智能体系统容错机制共识算法认知故障

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