Topological Characterization of Stabilizing Consensus

TL;DR

This paper uses point-set topology to fully characterize when deterministic stabilizing consensus is solvable or impossible in systems with benign faults, extending topological methods from terminating consensus.

Contribution

It introduces a topological framework based on semi-open decision sets and semi-continuous functions to analyze stabilizing consensus, providing a unified explanation for known impossibility results.

Findings

Topological characterization of stabilizing consensus solvability.

Equivalence of multi-valued stabilizing consensus with different validity conditions.

Topological explanation of existing impossibility results.

Abstract

We provide a complete characterization of the solvability/impossibility of deterministic stabilizing consensus in any computing model with benign process and communication faults using point-set topology. Relying on the topologies for infinite executions introduced by Nowak, Schmid and Winkler (JACM, 2024) for terminating consensus, we prove that semi-open decision sets and semi-continuous decision functions as introduced by Levin (AMM, 1963) are the appropriate means for this characterization: Unlike the decision functions for terminating consensus, which are continuous, semi-continuous functions do not require the inverse image of an open set to be open and hence allow to map a connected space to a disconnected one. We also show that multi-valued stabilizing consensus with weak and strong validity are equivalent, as is the case for terminating consensus. By applying our results to (variants of) all the known possibilities/impossibilities for stabilizing consensus, we easily provide a topological explanation of these results.