gohotstuff

gohotstuff

Gohotstuff is a Go library which implements the chained-hotStuff consensus protocol, more precisely, the LibraBFT algorithmic core. It has been used as a consensus component to help large-scale online blockchain system functioning normally (See the repo Xuperchain).

Start

Compiling

Our project is simple, pls use make only.

Cmds

Dictionary /output contains bin and configurations.Use command start to run up a single hotstuff node.

    gohotstuff start

Gohotstuff uses libp2p to build peer-to-peer systems where the network key should be generated as an communication key, an identity as well. Please generate nodes own network key and crypto key before start-up.

    gohotstuff genkey --type network
    gohotstuff genkey --type crypto

Network identity alse follows libp2p style, uses address type to preview the node's identity, the last slash part of which indicates the validator name.

    // output like: /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/30001/p2p/Qmf2HeHe4sspGkfRCTq6257Vm3UHzvh2TeQJHHvHzzuFw6
    // use '/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/30001' as the p2p address
    // use 'Qmf2HeHe4sspGkfRCTq6257Vm3UHzvh2TeQJHHvHzzuFw6' as the validator name.
    
    gohotstuff preview

Configuration

See the dictionary /conf.

Build up a system

Use commands mentioned before can specify a new node with the new configuration. Also, we can start up different nodes with different network identities to build up a hotstuff peer-to-peer system.

Attention: The bootstrap node should be started at the very begining.

Customization

Users can definite pacemaker|election|saftyrules objects and register with a new state. See the initialization of a state machine in our code as an example:

func createConsensus(name string, cc crypto.CryptoClient, cfg *state.ConsensusConfig, logger libs.Logger) (*state.State, error) {
	// ticker is a timer that schedules timeouts conditional on the height/round/step in the timeoutInfo.
	ticker := state.NewDefaultTimeoutTicker(logger)

	smr, err := state.NewState(state.PeerID(name), cc, ticker, logger, cfg)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	// pacemaker controls the current status of the state machine.
	pacemaker := state.NewDefaultPacemaker(cfg.StartRound)
	if err := smr.RegisterPaceMaker(pacemaker); err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	// election chooses the specific leader and validators in different round.
	election := state.NewDefaultElection(cfg.StartRound, cfg.StartValidators)
	if err := smr.RegisterElection(election); err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	// safetyrules take responsibility for the access control of the procedures.
	safetyRules := state.NewDefaultSafetyRules(smr)
	if err := smr.RegisterSaftyrules(safetyRules); err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	return smr, nil
}