[someguy4242]

Can you point me in the right direction to understand Zookeepers fatal flaw?

I know you linked the first paper, but yeah candidly I don’t wish to read the full paper

Don’t mean this sarcastically whatsoever. Genuine interest.

[mprime1]

The fatal flaw is calling them "locks".

When programmers think of locks, they think of something that can be used to guarantee mutual exclusion.

Distributed locks have edge cases where mutual exclusion is violated.

Implementation does not matter.

e.g. imagine someone shows you a design for a perpetual motion machine. You don't need to know the details to know it doesn't work! It would violate the laws of physics!

Similarly, anyone telling you they created an implementation of a distributed lock that is safe, is claiming their system breaks the laws of information theory.

"Distributed locks" are at best contention-reduction mechanisms. i.e. they can keep multiple processes from piling up and slowing each other down.

[Some] Paxos for example use leader election to streamline the protocol and achieve high throughput. But Paxos safety does NOT depend on it. If there are multiple leaders active (which will inevitably happen), the protocol still guarantees its safety properties.