tendermint/docs/specification/new-spec

Tendermint Specification

This is a markdown specification of the Tendermint blockchain. It defines the base data structures used in the blockchain and how they are validated.

XXX: this spec is a work in progress and not yet complete - see github isses and pull requests for more details.

If you find discrepancies between the spec and the code that do not have an associated issue or pull request on github, please submit them to our bug bounty!

Contents

• Overview
• Encoding and Digests
• Blockchain
• State
• Consensus
• P2P

Overview

Tendermint provides Byzantine Fault Tolerant State Machine Replication using hash-linked batches of transactions. Such transaction batches are called "blocks". Hence Tendermint defines a "blockchain".

Each block in Tendermint has a unique index - its Height. A block at Height == H can only be committed after the block at Height == H-1. Each block is committed by a known set of weighted Validators. Membership and weighting within this set may change over time. Tendermint guarantees the safety and liveness of the blockchain so long as less than 1/3 of the total weight of the Validator set is malicious.

A commit in Tendermint is a set of signed messages from more than 2/3 of the total weight of the current Validator set. Validators take turns proposing blocks and voting on them. Once enough votes are received, the block is considered committed. These votes are included in the next block as proof that the previous block was committed - they cannot be included in the current block, as that block has already been created.

Once a block is committed, it can be executed against an application. The application returns results for each of the transactions in the block. The application can also return changes to be made to the validator set, as well as a cryptographic digest of its latest state.

Tendermint is designed to enable efficient verification and authentication of the latest state of the blockchain. To achieve this, it embeds cryptographic commitments to certain information in the block "header". This information includes the contents of the block (eg. the transactions), the validator set committing the block, as well as the various results returned by the application. Note, however, that block execution only occurs after a block is committed. Thus, application results can only be included in the next block.

Also note that information like the transaction results and the validator set are never directly included in the block - only their cryptographic digests (Merkle roots) are. Hence, verification of a block requires a separate data structure to store this information. We call this the State. Block verification also requires access to the previous block.

TODO

• Light Client
• P2P
• Reactor protocols (consensus, mempool, blockchain, pex)