&gt; <i>those proofs are notoriously based on fairy tales such as reliable networking</i><p>Raft isn&#x27;t. (I actually don&#x27;t believe Paxos or Zookeeper do either, but I only understand Raft, so let me speak for that one.) Directly from the link in the post you&#x27;re responding to:<p>&gt; <i>Consensus algorithms for practical systems typically have the following properties:</i><p>&gt; <i>They ensure safety (never returning an incorrect result) under all non-Byzantine conditions, including network delays, partitions, and packet loss, duplication, and reordering.</i><p>This applies to Raft, as well: Raft-the-algorithm will behave correctly during these events. The paper linked to above provides a proof of such.<p>&gt; <i>The fact that a protocol (e.g. Raft) has been proven correct sets the floor but it is certainly not sufficient to assume correctness of an implementation.</i><p>These are two separate things, and you need <i>both</i>. You need to know that an algorithm is sound, that it accomplishes what it sets out to do. You <i>also</i> need to know that a particular implementation of an algorithm is correct.<p>(While I said I haven&#x27;t read the ZK paper, it does mention,<p>&gt; <i>Paxos does not require FIFO channels for communication, so it tolerates message loss
and reordering.</i><p>)