block-creation.md

Continuous Block Creation Flow

The purpose of consensus is to continuously commit new blocks. Blocks are populated with transactions waiting in TransactionPool.

We currently support leader-based consensus algorithms, meaning a leader node is elected and creates a block proposal which is then passed to validator nodes (members of the block committee) for approval.

Participants in this flow

• Committee nodes

  • ConsensusAlgo
  • ConsensusContext
  • TransactionPool
  • VirtualMachine
  • Processor
  • StateStorage
  • CrosschainConnector
  • BlockStorage
  • Gossip

• All nodes

  • ConsensusAlgo
  • ConsensusContext
  • BlockStorage
  • StateStorage
  • TransactionPool
  • Gossip
  • PublicApi

Assumptions for successful flow

• BlockStorage is synchronized to latest committed block.
  • A node cannot participate in a consensus committee unless this is the case.

Flow

• Before commit.

  First half: steps 1-3 out of 5

• After commit.

  Second half: steps 4-5 out of 5