Partition tolerance is not a defining property of distributed systems, just a very valuable one. You only really want to sacrifice partition tolerance if the p

Partition tolerance is not a defining property of distributed systems, just a very valuable one. You only really want to sacrifice partition tolerance if the precise correctness of your data is not tremendously important. A CA system can always respond and appear correct, but network partitions result in desyncs. I believe this approach is fairly popular in video games, where a CA system for multiplayer can provide each client with a coherent gameplay experience at the expense of things just breaking if a partition forms. Sorry, game over, please try again. Most serious systems, though, require P. One potentially interesting example that uses the current fashion of the day could be to compare payment networks. Visa's distributed payments system is CP, which is to say that it's a consistent system and getting a successful response back means your payment has gone through, but you have no guarantee of getting a successful response. The bitcoin network is AP, which is to say that it's a highly _available_ system which will never fail a response (so long as you can reach one node), but getting a successful response is no guarantee that your payment has gone through. In all cases, the sacrificed letter is not gone, merely imperfect. This does not mean that Visa is not Available, it just isn't _perfectly_ Available. It does not mean Bitcoin is not Consistent, it just isn't _perfectly_ Consistent. It does not mean that your video game is not Partition Tolerant, it just is not _perfectly_ Partition Tolerant. You can sacrifice any of the three and still have a distributed system, it will just behave differently.