Parsec being "asynchronous", what are the benefits and disadvantages

[g.u.y]

Hi everyone,

A distributed consensus algorithm can be “fully” or “weakly” synchronous as well as “asynchronous”.

What does this mean for such an algorithm’s utility?

Watching the Parsec material it’s clear to me its authors relate to asynchronous as a big advantage, but, can asynchronous also mean that finality is delayed compared to other algorithms?

huminqiang_201293_4665898_Minqiang%20Hu%20265%20presentation%20slides.pdf

gives some background

Would love to learn your thoughts, thanks,
Guy

[dirvine]

@g.u.y

but, can asynchronous also mean that finality is delayed compared to other algorithms?

Not unless your algorithm has a leader that could stall or similar. Finality is OK as long as t < 1/3 which is a classic assumption all these algorithms will make. So finality is something you must ensure and do so within the byzantine assumption. You can check algorand/Ava as well they should be saying the same thing.