There is no way to know for sure that a Byzantine system is actually operating in a way that replicated copies of your data are actually safely written. Both due to the exact same issue of the drives themselves, and also that Byzantine system software is liable to have a variety of bugs and invalid states that will keep it operating as normal, even though the nodes are actually in a fault mode. (the problem is twofold: 1) the node and/or system not refusing writes when in a fault state, 2) the system not actually knowing that it's in a fault state) Even if you do all kinds of Jepsen simulation and mathematical proofs of the software (including the operating system!), you still can't trust the drives.
I think the only way to solve the problem is new storage firmware and hardware that is open and guarantees a write is done. I'm sure some companies may claim such functionality but we need an open source architecture and code to be sure.
In the meantime I think synchronous writes to multiple nodes is the safest option. Avoids complexity and bugs in fancy software, and the hardware is what it is.
> There is no way to know for sure that a Byzantine system is actually operating in a way that replicated copies of your data are actually safely written.
Isn't this how Bitcoin adds to the ledger though? Using a merkle tree and slowing things down significantly with those 6+ confirmations.
I think the only way to solve the problem is new storage firmware and hardware that is open and guarantees a write is done. I'm sure some companies may claim such functionality but we need an open source architecture and code to be sure.
In the meantime I think synchronous writes to multiple nodes is the safest option. Avoids complexity and bugs in fancy software, and the hardware is what it is.