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35 lines
1.8 KiB
35 lines
1.8 KiB
/*
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Package lite provides a light client implementation.
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The concept of light clients was introduced in the Bitcoin white paper. It
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describes a watcher of distributed consensus process that only validates the
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consensus algorithm and not the state machine transactions within.
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Tendermint light clients allow bandwidth & compute-constrained devices, such as
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smartphones, low-power embedded chips, or other blockchains to efficiently
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verify the consensus of a Tendermint blockchain. This forms the basis of safe
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and efficient state synchronization for new network nodes and inter-blockchain
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communication (where a light client of one Tendermint instance runs in another
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chain's state machine).
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In a network that is expected to reliably punish validators for misbehavior by
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slashing bonded stake and where the validator set changes infrequently, clients
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can take advantage of this assumption to safely synchronize a lite client
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without downloading the intervening headers.
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Light clients (and full nodes) operating in the Proof Of Stake context need a
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trusted block height from a trusted source that is no older than 1 unbonding
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window plus a configurable evidence submission synchrony bound. This is called
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weak subjectivity.
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Weak subjectivity is required in Proof of Stake blockchains because it is
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costless for an attacker to buy up voting keys that are no longer bonded and
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fork the network at some point in its prior history. See Vitalik's post at
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[Proof of Stake: How I Learned to Love Weak
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Subjectivity](https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/).
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NOTE: Tendermint provides a somewhat different (stronger) light client model
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than Bitcoin under eclipse, since the eclipsing node(s) can only fool the light
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client if they have two-thirds of the private keys from the last root-of-trust.
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*/
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package lite
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