Bao had assumed the book keeper was the important one.
There were nine of them.
At sundown they stood in a row at the end of the market and read the day back out loud, line by line, all nine at once. If a line matched, it stood. Anyone could come and listen. Hardly anybody did, because it took an hour and it was the dullest thing in the Pond.
"What if one of them just wrote something nobody called?" said Bao.
"Try it," said Moolah.
So Bao went to the fourth book keeper, a mole with spectacles and very neat writing, and put a shell on his table, and asked him to write that the bread cart belonged to her.
"Certainly," said the mole, and wrote it.
Bao spent the afternoon feeling clever and slightly sick.
At sundown the nine stood in their row. The mole read his line out. The other eight did not have it. Four hundred animals had not heard it called. Somebody at the back laughed.
The line did not stand.
The mole came and found her afterwards and gave her the shell back.
"You knew," said Bao.
"Of course."
"Then why did you write it?"
"Because you asked. It cost me nothing. And it was never going to work." He polished his spectacles. "That is the whole arrangement. I do not have to be honest. I only have to be outnumbered."
Bao went and sat down next to Moolah.
"I would need five of them," she said. "Five out of nine."
"You would."
"That is expensive."
"It is. And the four you did not buy would say so out loud, at sundown, in front of everybody." Moolah stretched. "And four hundred animals heard the real thing with their own ears, so you would have to buy them as well."
Bao started staying for the reading back after that.
It was still the dullest thing in the Pond.
She thought that was probably the point.
Margin Note: Trust nobody, and it works. Trust one, and it doesn't.
The Honest Bit: The book keepers are validators. On a real chain, thousands of machines each keep their own copy and compare them constantly, and a line only stands if enough of them agree. The system is not built on the hope that everybody is honest. It is built so that dishonesty loses even when somebody tries. This is also why people care how many validators a chain has, and who runs them.
The Question of the Day: Bao paid one book keeper and it failed. Five out of nine would have been enough to change all the books. Say why it still would not have worked.
Try It: Look up how many active validators BNB Chain has right now. Then work out how many of them would need to agree with you.
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