#dusk $DUSK @Dusk I’ve always wanted to figure out what Dusk’s repeatedly emphasized “deterministic settlement” specifically means, and what the fundamental difference is from the usual “transaction has been confirmed.” This time I’m focusing on only this one point.
Most public chains’ notion of “confirmation” is actually probabilistic—the deeper a block is buried, the lower the chance it will be rolled back, but in theory there is always some (even if extremely small) probability that it could be overturned. In practice, exchanges often require users to wait for several block confirmations; fundamentally, they’re waiting for that probability to drop to a level they can accept. Dusk’s deterministic settlement isn’t based on that logic. The official explanation is: once a block has been formally approved by the consensus committee, it is immediately and explicitly finalized—not “increasingly unlikely to be overturned,” but “will not be overturned from this moment onward.” The mechanism relies on a group of validators directly signing a joint proof for that block, rather than stacking probability over time.
Here’s a rather interesting contradiction I ran into. I found a very early Dusk official article that says, “block confirmation time is roughly between five and twenty seconds,” and the wording still uses the probabilistic-leaning phrase “confirmation time.” But in more recent materials, the wording has changed to “you can obtain deterministic final results within a few seconds,” shifting from “confirmation” to “final.” I initially thought this was just the same mechanism described with different wording. Later I realized this might reflect protocol upgrades over the past few years. The early versions may indeed have still had a hint of probabilistic confirmation, while later versions strengthened the mechanism of “a group of people jointly signing to finalize it directly.” I couldn’t find any document clearly stating “starting from which specific version it became pure deterministic finality,” so I can only say that in all likelihood, there were iterations in between, and I haven’t yet verified which upgrade was the dividing point.
For me, if you put this into real-world scenarios, the significance is pretty substantial. For example, in the settlement of funds in a securities transaction, “it’s unlikely to be overturned” versus “it won’t be overturned from this moment onward” correspond to completely different legal responsibility determinations—the former, when making formal financial settlements, always has to leave a safety buffer and an extra waiting period
Most public chains’ notion of “confirmation” is actually probabilistic—the deeper a block is buried, the lower the chance it will be rolled back, but in theory there is always some (even if extremely small) probability that it could be overturned. In practice, exchanges often require users to wait for several block confirmations; fundamentally, they’re waiting for that probability to drop to a level they can accept. Dusk’s deterministic settlement isn’t based on that logic. The official explanation is: once a block has been formally approved by the consensus committee, it is immediately and explicitly finalized—not “increasingly unlikely to be overturned,” but “will not be overturned from this moment onward.” The mechanism relies on a group of validators directly signing a joint proof for that block, rather than stacking probability over time.
Here’s a rather interesting contradiction I ran into. I found a very early Dusk official article that says, “block confirmation time is roughly between five and twenty seconds,” and the wording still uses the probabilistic-leaning phrase “confirmation time.” But in more recent materials, the wording has changed to “you can obtain deterministic final results within a few seconds,” shifting from “confirmation” to “final.” I initially thought this was just the same mechanism described with different wording. Later I realized this might reflect protocol upgrades over the past few years. The early versions may indeed have still had a hint of probabilistic confirmation, while later versions strengthened the mechanism of “a group of people jointly signing to finalize it directly.” I couldn’t find any document clearly stating “starting from which specific version it became pure deterministic finality,” so I can only say that in all likelihood, there were iterations in between, and I haven’t yet verified which upgrade was the dividing point.
For me, if you put this into real-world scenarios, the significance is pretty substantial. For example, in the settlement of funds in a securities transaction, “it’s unlikely to be overturned” versus “it won’t be overturned from this moment onward” correspond to completely different legal responsibility determinations—the former, when making formal financial settlements, always has to leave a safety buffer and an extra waiting period