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Consensus.md

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Consensus

Overall

The consensus is responsible for

  • checking the validity of blocks and transactions
  • choosing the MAIN branch
  • computing the assemblies PIIs
  • mining blocks
  • cleaning up the transaction pool

Entrypoints

The important entry points are

  • add_transaction: check that a transaction is valid and add it to the transaction pool
  • add_block: add a block as DETACHED or UNVERIFIED to the ledger and then call synchronously verify_blocks
  • add_block_async: add a block as DETACHED or UNVERIFIED to the ledger and call process_blocks which will call asynchronously verify_blocks

verify_blocks

verify_blocks is responsible for verifying UNVERIFIED blocks, setting them as FORK and then setting the longest branch as MAIN.

Threads

Compute pii thread

This thread is started at the creation of a Consensus object by the start_compute_pii_thread method. Each will regularily check if there is an assembly to compute and if there is start the computation. compute_pii_sleep in the consensus config determines how long the thread waits before checking again if there is an assemly to process.

Update heights thread

This thread is started at the creation of a Consensus object by the start_update_heights_thread method. This thread is responsible for writing a list of heights that should be mined by the bot later. Those heights are used by the miner thread to know which blocks it should mine. It allows the miner thread to react more quickly when it has a block to mine. update_heights_sleep in the consensus config determines how long it waits between each call to update_heights_to_write.

Miner thread

This thread is started at the creation of a Consensus object by the start_miner_thread method. It is responsible for regularly calling mine_block which will use the heights to write to determine if it should mine a block. miner_sleep in the consensus config determines how long the thread waits between calls to mine_block.

Process blocks thread

This thread is started when process_blocks is called and the thread is not already running. It is responsible for calling verify_blocks asynchronously. process_blocks is called by add_block_async.

Check signatures threads

Those threads are managed by a threading pool that is created if the consensus object is constructed with an argument nb_check_signatures_threads greater than 1. When verifying the transactions of a blocks each worker thread will be responsible for checking that a fraction of the transactions are valid, so that it makes it faster to verify blocks on computers with multiple cores.