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Ordering Linearizability

Definition

Ordering Linearizability is a strong consistency guarantee ensuring that all operations appear to have occurred instantaneously at some point between their invocation and response. In distributed systems like blockchains, this property means that transactions are processed and recorded in a global, sequential order that reflects their real-time execution, as if there were a single, centralized processor. It eliminates ambiguities regarding the sequence of events across different nodes, which is crucial for maintaining data integrity and preventing race conditions in decentralized applications. Achieving true linearizability in a distributed ledger is a significant technical challenge.