- # Application BlockChain Interface (ABCI)
-
- Blockchains are systems for multi-master state machine replication.
- **ABCI** is an interface that defines the boundary between the replication engine (the blockchain),
- and the state machine (the application).
- Using a socket protocol, a consensus engine running in one process
- can manage an application state running in another.
-
- Previously, the ABCI was referred to as TMSP.
-
- The community has provided a number of additional implementations, see the [Tendermint Ecosystem](https://tendermint.com/ecosystem)
-
-
- ## Installation & Usage
-
- To get up and running quickly, see the [getting started guide](../docs/app-dev/getting-started.md) along with the [abci-cli documentation](../docs/app-dev/abci-cli.md) which will go through the examples found in the [examples](./example/) directory.
-
- ## Specification
-
- A detailed description of the ABCI methods and message types is contained in:
-
- - [The main spec](../docs/spec/abci/abci.md)
- - [A protobuf file](./types/types.proto)
- - [A Go interface](./types/application.go)
-
- ## Protocol Buffers
-
- To compile the protobuf file, run (from the root of the repo):
-
- ```
- make protoc_abci
- ```
-
- See `protoc --help` and [the Protocol Buffers site](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers)
- for details on compiling for other languages. Note we also include a [GRPC](https://www.grpc.io/docs)
- service definition.
-
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