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answer: direct
beat: system-design
source: 1 article · updated: November 14, 2026
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What is atomic broadcast?

A guarantee that all participants receive the same messages in the same order, and that only sent messages are delivered. It is equivalent in difficulty to consensus, which cannot be perfectly guaranteed under all failures, so production systems approximate it with a single ordering authority and fast recovery.

Answered in

Real-Time Chat That Never Lies: Persist Before You Broadcast, and Cache the Cold Start

Why send flows must store a message before showing it, how an approximation of atomic broadcast works, and why session bootstrap needs an edge cache.

Crashtech Editorial November 14, 2026 System Design & Architecture

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