When I read the section about SA consensus, my first reaction was to look for its finality time parameter. The whitepaper says “finality achieved within a few seconds,” but it doesn’t specify exactly how many seconds. This ambiguity made me a bit uneasy, but it also pushed me to understand the logic behind it.
First, let’s compare. Bitcoin’s finality for $DUSK relies on probability: with about 6 block confirmations, it takes roughly 1 hour. The longer you wait, the more confident you are that the transaction won’t be rolled back. Ethereum’s PoS finality relies on the Casper protocol: it needs two epochs, about 12.8 minutes. Dusk claims it only takes a few seconds—why is that?
The key lies in its deterministic assignment mechanism. The whitepaper states that before each round begins, the DS algorithm has already pre-selected who will be the block producer and who will be the voting committee. This “pre-knowing” means that voters are already ready before the block is generated; there’s no need to temporarily recruit participants or broadcast across the whole network to find consensus. Communication costs are greatly reduced.
I broke down its process. Each round contains multiple iterations, and each iteration has three stages: proposal, voting, and confirmation. The voting committee involves only the group of validators that has been selected, not everyone across the network. The number of nodes participating in voting is constrained within a relatively small range, so the communication volume during voting is small. The exchange of information can be completed in just a few @Dusk .
But there’s one part I couldn’t quite figure out. The whitepaper mentions the term “rolling finality,” but it doesn’t elaborate on the specific mechanism. My understanding is that it might mean finality is not locked all at once; instead, as new blocks keep being generated, the finality probability of the previous block gradually increases. If that’s the case, then “a few seconds” might refer to the first layer of confirmation, not final irreversible finality. #dusk
Also, I noticed the whitepaper doesn’t provide a precise number of seconds. “3 seconds” and “9 seconds” are both called “a few seconds,” but they mean completely different things in financial scenarios. For now, I can’t find the answer from the whitepaper; I may need to wait for the real test data after the mainnet goes live.
First, let’s compare. Bitcoin’s finality for $DUSK relies on probability: with about 6 block confirmations, it takes roughly 1 hour. The longer you wait, the more confident you are that the transaction won’t be rolled back. Ethereum’s PoS finality relies on the Casper protocol: it needs two epochs, about 12.8 minutes. Dusk claims it only takes a few seconds—why is that?
The key lies in its deterministic assignment mechanism. The whitepaper states that before each round begins, the DS algorithm has already pre-selected who will be the block producer and who will be the voting committee. This “pre-knowing” means that voters are already ready before the block is generated; there’s no need to temporarily recruit participants or broadcast across the whole network to find consensus. Communication costs are greatly reduced.
I broke down its process. Each round contains multiple iterations, and each iteration has three stages: proposal, voting, and confirmation. The voting committee involves only the group of validators that has been selected, not everyone across the network. The number of nodes participating in voting is constrained within a relatively small range, so the communication volume during voting is small. The exchange of information can be completed in just a few @Dusk .
But there’s one part I couldn’t quite figure out. The whitepaper mentions the term “rolling finality,” but it doesn’t elaborate on the specific mechanism. My understanding is that it might mean finality is not locked all at once; instead, as new blocks keep being generated, the finality probability of the previous block gradually increases. If that’s the case, then “a few seconds” might refer to the first layer of confirmation, not final irreversible finality. #dusk
Also, I noticed the whitepaper doesn’t provide a precise number of seconds. “3 seconds” and “9 seconds” are both called “a few seconds,” but they mean completely different things in financial scenarios. For now, I can’t find the answer from the whitepaper; I may need to wait for the real test data after the mainnet goes live.