Files
consensus/pkg
zeekay 9b217a7037 consensus: delete what was saying the same thing twice
Nothing here changes what the crate decides.

The three network presets each restated all twenty configuration fields,
so mainnet and the default could drift apart silently. They are now
stated as what they change: mainnet is the default with a committee of
21, a seed, and a higher security level, which is what it always was.

Four FPC seeds sat in four places, and the default was not the seed Go
defaults to — so a default Rust node and a default Go node drew
different theta schedules. There is one named constant per network now,
and the default is Go's.

Luminance::default re-hardcoded the same five numbers the default
configuration already held; it reads the configuration. FpcSelector
likewise. Both are Default impls rather than inherent methods that
shadow the trait, and QuasarConfig's Default no longer calls a
same-named inherent method — that only avoided being infinite recursion
because inherent methods win, which is not a thing to rely on.

Deleted: the Config and Chain aliases kept for backward compatibility;
33KB of tests parked as .old and excluded from the package; a build
script whose own comment said no Rust code references the C symbols it
linked, and the cc build-dependency it needed; an unread field on
PhotonSampler. The crate builds with no warnings.

The benchmark had not compiled since the crate stopped being an FFI
wrapper — it imported five types that no longer exist. Rewritten against
the API that does, and it now measures the part that costs: verifying
signatures, not inserting into a HashMap. BENCHMARK_RESULTS.md, whose
own header retracted its numbers as a u8 overflow bug against that
removed API, is deleted; the benchmark is the source of truth. LLM.md
carries the finding worth keeping — the aggregate check is flat in
committee size where the per-vote check is linear, and they answer
different questions.
2026-08-28 23:49:01 -07:00
..

Lux Consensus Source Code Organization

This directory contains implementations of the Lux consensus framework in multiple programming languages. Each language implementation provides the same consensus algorithms with language-specific optimizations and idioms.

Directory Structure

src/
├── c/          # C implementation (high-performance, minimal overhead)
├── cpp/        # C++ implementation with MLX extensions (GPU acceleration)
├── go/         # Go implementation (production blockchain integration)
├── python/     # Python implementation (research and prototyping)
└── rust/       # Rust implementation (memory-safe systems programming)

Language Implementations

Go (/src/go/)

  • Status: Production-ready
  • Use Case: Core blockchain node integration
  • Import Path: github.com/luxfi/consensus (via go.work at root)
  • Features: Full integration with Lux node, concurrent processing

C (/src/c/)

  • Status: Data structures only — not real consensus (per SDK audit)
  • Use Case: Embedded systems, performance-critical applications
  • Features: Minimal dependencies, ZeroMQ networking, SIMD optimizations

Rust (/src/rust/)

  • Status: FFI wrapper around the C library — inherits C limitations, not native consensus (per SDK audit)
  • Use Case: Memory-safe systems, async applications
  • Features: Zero-cost abstractions, async/await, compile-time guarantees

Python (/src/python/)

  • Status: Research/Development
  • Use Case: Prototyping, research, data analysis
  • Features: NumPy integration, ML frameworks, visualization

C++ (/src/cpp/)

  • Status: Development
  • Use Case: High-performance with GPU acceleration
  • Features: MLX extensions, template metaprogramming, SIMD/GPU support

Building

From the repository root:

# Build all implementations
make build

# Build specific language
make build-go
make build-c
make build-rust
make build-python
make build-cpp

Testing

From the repository root:

# Test all implementations
make test

# Test specific language
make test-go
make test-c
make test-rust
make test-python
make test-cpp

Consensus Engines

All implementations support these consensus engines (Quasar family):

  1. Wave - Threshold voting with fast probabilistic consensus (production)
  2. Nova - Linear chain consensus (wraps Ray sub-protocol)
  3. Nebula - DAG consensus with safe-prefix commit (wraps Field sub-protocol)
  4. PostQuantum - Quantum-resistant consensus with BLS + Pulsar + ML-DSA
  5. Chain - Linear chain consensus for ordered blocks
  6. DAG - Full directed acyclic graph consensus

Performance Benchmarks

Implementation Votes/Second Memory Usage Latency
C 14,000+ < 10 MB < 1ms
Rust 13,500+ < 15 MB < 1ms
Go 12,000+ < 20 MB < 2ms
C++ (w/ MLX) 15,000+ < 25 MB < 1ms
Python 5,000+ < 50 MB < 5ms

Note. These per-implementation votes/sec figures are unverified and, per the SDK audit, several measure data-structure insertion on stub/wrapper SDKs (C = data structures only, Rust = FFI wrapper over C, C++ = Wave-only stub); only the Python SDK implements real consensus. Treat as illustrative, not measured consensus throughput. See .github/workflows/README.md and the "Honest Assessment" block in LLM.md.

Protocol Compatibility

All implementations use the same binary protocol for network communication:

┌─────────────┬────────────┬──────────┬───────────┬──────────┐
│ Engine Type │ Node ID    │ Block ID │ Vote Type │ Reserved │
│ (1 byte)    │ (2 bytes)  │ (2 bytes)│ (1 byte)  │ (2 bytes)│
└─────────────┴────────────┴──────────┴───────────┴──────────┘

This ensures interoperability between different language implementations.

Development Guidelines

  1. Consistency: All implementations should provide the same consensus guarantees
  2. Testing: Each implementation must have comprehensive test coverage
  3. Documentation: Language-specific documentation in docs/{language}/
  4. Performance: Optimize for language strengths while maintaining correctness
  5. Compatibility: Maintain protocol compatibility across all implementations

Contributing

When adding features or fixes:

  1. Implement in the reference implementation (Go)
  2. Port to other languages maintaining consistency
  3. Add tests for all implementations
  4. Update documentation

See CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed guidelines.

License

Copyright (C) 2019-2025, Lux Industries Inc. All rights reserved.