The primary effect of this change is to simplify the implementation of the priority mempool to eliminate an unbounded heap growth observed by Vega team when it was enabled in their testnet. It updates and fixes #8775. The main body of this change is to remove the auxiliary indexing structures, and use only the concurrent list structure (the same as the legacy mempool) to maintain both gossip order and priority. This means that operations that require priority information, such as block updates and insert-time evictions, require a linear scan over the mempool. This tradeoff greatly simplifies the code and eliminates the long-term heap load, at the cost of some extra CPU and short-lived working memory during CheckTx and Update calls. Rough benchmark results: - This PR: BenchmarkTxMempool_CheckTx-10 486373 2271 ns/op - Original priority mempool implementation: BenchmarkTxMempool_CheckTx-10 500302 2113 ns/op - Legacy (v0) mempool: BenchmarkCheckTx-10 364591 3571 ns/op These benchmarks are not a good proxy for production load, but at least suggest that the overhead of the implementation changes are not cause for concern. In addition: - Rework synchronization so that access to shared data structures is safe. Previously shared locks were used to exclude block updates during calls that update mempool state. Now access is properly exclusive where necessary. - Fix a bug in the recheck flow, where priority updates from the application were not correctly reflected in the index structures. - Eliminate the need for separate recheck cursors during block update. This avoids the need to explicitly invalidate elements of the concurrent list, which averts the dependency cycle that led to objects being pinned. - Clean up, clarify, and fix inaccuracies in documentation comments throughout the package. Co-authored-by: William Banfield <4561443+williambanfield@users.noreply.github.com>
Tendermint
Byzantine-Fault Tolerant State Machines. Or Blockchain, for short.
| Branch | Tests | Coverage | Linting |
|---|---|---|---|
| master |
Tendermint Core is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) middleware that takes a state transition machine - written in any programming language - and securely replicates it on many machines.
For protocol details, see the specification.
For detailed analysis of the consensus protocol, including safety and liveness proofs, see our recent paper, "The latest gossip on BFT consensus".
Releases
Please do not depend on master as your production branch. Use releases instead.
Tendermint has been in the production of private and public environments, most notably the blockchains of the Cosmos Network. we haven't released v1.0 yet since we are making breaking changes to the protocol and the APIs. See below for more details about versioning.
In any case, if you intend to run Tendermint in production, we're happy to help. You can contact us over email or join the chat.
Security
To report a security vulnerability, see our bug bounty program. For examples of the kinds of bugs we're looking for, see our security policy.
We also maintain a dedicated mailing list for security updates. We will only ever use this mailing list to notify you of vulnerabilities and fixes in Tendermint Core. You can subscribe here.
Minimum requirements
| Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|
| Go version | Go1.16 or higher |
Documentation
Complete documentation can be found on the website.
Install
See the install instructions.
Quick Start
- Single node
- Local cluster using docker-compose
- Remote cluster using Terraform and Ansible
- Join the Cosmos testnet
Contributing
Please abide by the Code of Conduct in all interactions.
Before contributing to the project, please take a look at the contributing guidelines and the style guide. You may also find it helpful to read the specifications, watch the Developer Sessions, and familiarize yourself with our Architectural Decision Records.
Versioning
Semantic Versioning
Tendermint uses Semantic Versioning to determine when and how the version changes. According to SemVer, anything in the public API can change at any time before version 1.0.0
To provide some stability to users of 0.X.X versions of Tendermint, the MINOR version is used to signal breaking changes across Tendermint's API. This API includes all publicly exposed types, functions, and methods in non-internal Go packages as well as the types and methods accessible via the Tendermint RPC interface.
Breaking changes to these public APIs will be documented in the CHANGELOG.
Upgrades
In an effort to avoid accumulating technical debt prior to 1.0.0, we do not guarantee that breaking changes (ie. bumps in the MINOR version) will work with existing Tendermint blockchains. In these cases you will have to start a new blockchain, or write something custom to get the old data into the new chain. However, any bump in the PATCH version should be compatible with existing blockchain histories.
For more information on upgrading, see UPGRADING.md.
Supported Versions
Because we are a small core team, we only ship patch updates, including security updates, to the most recent minor release and the second-most recent minor release. Consequently, we strongly recommend keeping Tendermint up-to-date. Upgrading instructions can be found in UPGRADING.md.
Resources
Tendermint Core
For details about the blockchain data structures and the p2p protocols, see the Tendermint specification.
For details on using the software, see the documentation which is also hosted at: https://docs.tendermint.com/master/
Tools
Benchmarking is provided by tm-load-test.
Additional tooling can be found in /docs/tools.
Applications
- Cosmos SDK; a cryptocurrency application framework
- Ethermint; Ethereum on Tendermint
- Many more
Research
- The latest gossip on BFT consensus
- Master's Thesis on Tendermint
- Original Whitepaper: "Tendermint: Consensus Without Mining"
- Tendermint Core Blog
- Cosmos Blog
Join us!
Tendermint Core is maintained by Interchain GmbH. If you'd like to work full-time on Tendermint Core, we're hiring!
Funding for Tendermint Core development comes primarily from the Interchain Foundation, a Swiss non-profit. The Tendermint trademark is owned by Tendermint Inc., the for-profit entity that also maintains tendermint.com.
