DAY 172 / 210

Safety Properties in Distributed Systems

This opening day of phase-4 establishes the distinction between safety and liveness properties that underpins every later discussion of consensus, replication, and fault tolerance. Because Maku is building StartupTribunal, recognizing which invariants must never be violated is the prerequisite for choosing safe distribution strategies later in the arc. The day therefore focuses on precise definitions rather than implementation details.

⏱ 45 min target📝 3 quiz Qs

Resources

readingmixu.net
Distributed Systems for Fun and Profit
Chapter 1 (Introduction) and Chapter 2 (Up to CAP)
35 min

Deliverable

Journal entry posted to app/maku/page.tsx that lists three safety properties relevant to BriefForm submission handling

Quiz · 3 questions

1. Which statement correctly distinguishes safety from liveness?

Safety properties can be violated temporarily if the system eventually recoversA safety property asserts that nothing bad ever happens in any executionLiveness properties are easier to verify with model checkers than safety propertiesSafety and liveness are interchangeable terms in modern consensus literature

2. Give one concrete example of a safety violation that could occur when multiple BriefForm submissions race on the same tribunal record.

3. Why might a developer mistakenly believe that rate-limiter.ts already guarantees the safety property 'at most one active brief per user'?

Journal

Time spent (minutes)

Blockers

Commit / PR links (one per line)