Consensus (computer science)

Okay, kiddo! So, let's say you and your friends want to decide what game to play. Your one friend wants to play tag and another friend wants to play hide and seek. You want to play tag, but you want everyone to be happy, right? So what do you do?

You decide to ask everyone to vote on which game they want to play. If most of your friends vote for tag, then that is the game you will all play. This is what we call consensus!

Now, imagine you and your friends are computers instead of people. Sometimes, these computers need to work together to make decisions, just like your friends did when choosing a game to play.

But here's the tricky part - sometimes these computers may not all agree on what decision to make. Maybe one computer thinks the decision should be one way, while another computer thinks it should be another way.

This is where consensus in computer science comes in. It's a way for these computers to work together and make a decision that everyone agrees on, just like how you and your friends agreed to play tag because most people wanted to.

It's important for computers to have consensus because if they don't agree on something important, it can cause big problems! Just like if your friends couldn't decide what game to play and started arguing and getting upset, the same thing can happen with computers if they can't agree on something.

So, consensus is a way for computers to work together and make a decision that everyone agrees on, just like how you and your friends made a decision on what game to play!