A. Jesse Jiryu Davis • 1/14/2026

Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment, Part 3

This third article in a series analyzes the classic 'coordinated attack' problem in distributed systems. It details the proof from Halpern and Moses' 1990 paper, demonstrating why coordinated action is impossible in an asynchronous environment where messages can be lost or delayed, as it requires common knowledge which cannot be achieved. The post walks through formal lemmas linking the attack condition to mutual and common knowledge.

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#formal verification #distributed systems #Common Knowledge