The "world" runs on Kubernetes which is using Raft: https://pkg.go.dev/go.etcd.io/etcd/raft/v3

Are you saying that this implementation is wrong?

"This Raft library is stable and feature complete. As of 2016, it is the most widely used Raft library in production, serving tens of thousands clusters each day. It powers distributed systems such as etcd, Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Cloud Foundry Diego, CockroachDB, TiDB, Project Calico, Flannel, Hyperledger and more."

One of the most popular distributed DB is Cockroach which is written in go and also uses Raft: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/raf...

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rubiquity 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

etcd has had numerous liveness and safety bugs, with one happening as recently as December of 2025. Would you consider that a correct implementation?

You may be interested in knowing that the largest managed Kubernetes service in the world (AWS EKS) ripped out etcd for in favor of their homegrown consensus service for large scale EKS clusters: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/under-the-hood-amazo...

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fl0ki 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

etcd is some of the most amateur code I've ever seen, despite being one of the oldest and presumably most mature "infrastructure" projects written in Go.

goBGP is arguably even worse.

I don't have a third place in mind that's even worth mentioning relative to these two.

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alfons_foobar 6 hours ago | parent [-]

just curious, what problems do you see with gobgp?

(I have only a rather basic familiarity with go, but was considering gobgp for an infra project...)

	▲	iscoelho an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Not speaking to their code, but to start GoBGP has the worst performance of any BGP daemon by a large margin [1]. [1] https://elegantnetwork.github.io/posts/comparing-open-source...

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Thaxll 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd like to know what you base your statement on that the Raft implementations in etcd or CockroachDB are incorrect. Your original paper does not mention those implementations, so where does that claim come from?

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gyesxnuibh 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Having run a fleet of 100s of etcd clusters for 10000s of rps, and the fact that upstream runs tests similar to antithesis and recently partnered with antithesis [0], and jepsen has tested it long ago as well [1]. Etcd's raft algorithm is fine. Someone even did a TLA+ proof on it in the last couple years[2]. Yes there was a correctness issue a few years ago but otherwise the person you're replying to doesn't know what they're talking about. Also those bugs have nothing to do with the raft implementation, but instead the state machine implemented on top.

0: https://etcd.io/blog/2025/autonomus_testing_with_antithesis/

1: https://jepsen.io/analyses/etcd-3.4.3

2: https://github.com/etcd-io/raft/pull/113

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iscoelho an hour ago | parent | next [-]

"there was a correction issue" is downplaying it. Etcd is truly the worst example of Raft.

Etcd corruption and loss of quorum is extremely common in practice and the GitHub issues sit for years. The design is simple, the performance is modest, yet it still has still never been reliable, despite being marketed as so. I can't speak to whether this is specifically due to their Raft implementation, but I'd argue the entire codebase is over-engineered and questionable.

	▲	AlphaSite 13 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		My beef with etcd is that its neither performant nor reliable. Its very much {reliable, performant, flexible} pick none.
	▲	gyesxnuibh an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Their lock, leader election, sessions, and leases are all awful and I'd never recommend anyone to use those. But as a strongly consistent kv store and if you need the watch mechanics, its useful. It has its place and that's mostly being used by kubernetes.

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cobbzilla 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is the correctness of its implementation of the algorithm unaffected by bugs in this state machine? Maybe I missed something.

	▲	gyesxnuibh an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The raft algorithm works and if you implemented a less complex state machine (like using a simpler kv store that doesn't need global event ordering via revisions and watches) it would work. That's what antithesis said they did to test the raft algorithms in the other article linked

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camkego 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry to pile on, but yeah, I wanted to use etcd during 2021 and 2022, around v3.5, but etcd had serious issues including silent data corruption. If you are curious, ask gemini flash "there were a number of etcd releases years ago where it seems a new wave of developers came in and started breaking everything"

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ablob 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Surely the King is doing it, so that must be the correct way. Look, the King even wears clothes and is totally not naked at all.

That the world runs on Kubernetes is no qualitative statement about the correctness of its Raft implementation. You can say that it's clearly good enough to not matter most of the time, but that is a different statement. No matter who you look at, they're just cooking with gas like you do, and they can make mistakes in just the same way.

Now; I'm only attacking your argument. I do neither know nor particularly care about the correctness of that implementation itself. There's been better refutations of the claim you replied to in other answers anyway.

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formerly_proven 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Now there's three of them https://github.com/hashicorp/raft

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aksss 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's not remotely what he's saying at all.

	▲	volkk 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> As another example, Go still has not yielded a correct implementation of Raft or Paxos > are you saying this implementation is wrong? > That's not remotely what he's saying at all. I'm v confused by this thread
	▲	quietbritishjim 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I don't care for Go myself (especially its concurrency model, which is a total dinosaur in a world where we have structured concurrency) so I'm not saying this to support my favourite language, but: That is literally what the comment says.
	▲	rubiquity 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Thank you. I don't know why this is so complicated.