More than two decades ago, when Brewer proposed the CAP theorem, it became evident to database practitioners and researchers that it is hard to design a system that is both consistent and available under network partitions [1], [2], [3]. Unsurprisingly, each application designer still wants to offer its client consistent results and an always-available system despite any failures [4], [5].

Each application developer desires to provide its users with consistent results and an always-available system despite failures. Boldly, the CALM theorem disagrees. It states that it is hard to design a system that is both consistent and available under network partitions; select at most two out of these three properties. One possible solution is to design coordination-free monotonic applications. However, a majority of real-world applications require coordination. We resolve this dilemma by conjecturing that partial progress is possible under network partitions. This partial progress ensures the system appears responsive to a subset of clients and achieves non-zero throughput during failures. To this extent, we present the design of our CASSANDRA consensus protocol that allows partitioned replicas to order client requests.