zeekayandHanzo Dev
937578257d
verifyCert's count-only branch verified a certificate and checked its declared quorum against the number the committee derives, and read nothing else against that committee. The derived clause cannot see a small one, because it shrinks with it: TwoThirdsCount(2) is 2, so two signatures over a two-member committee ARE that committee's quorum and the certificate passes as the one this node would have built itself. What passed was export finality — irreversible, the rung bridges read — over a committee whose Byzantine budget f=⌊(n−1)/3⌋ is zero, where every signer is load-bearing and one compromised key is not a fault absorbed by a margin but a forged certificate. It did not stop at the node that admitted it, and that is the part that made it worth a clause. TryAccept hands the accepted cert's bytes to GossipCert, and applyBranchFinalization files them as the proof served to stragglers on catch-up. So one admission turned a stake-less node into a second source for a certificate carrying no fault budget, and every node it convinced became a third. The floor stops that at each hop, which is why it belongs at the arrival gate and not only at the accept. The clause is the one verifyQuasarSupermajority already holds on the WEIGHTED road, read here against the committee because that is this road's authoritative view of its set — the same sentinel and the same TwoThirdsCount number, so the two Go roads refuse the same certificate by the same name. Both roads are Go's, and that is the whole comparison. No other implementation has a stake-less accept road for this clause to exist on: Rust's Cert::verify is the structural predicate its weighted road runs first, never an accept rule on its own, and C++'s QuorumCertEngine::verify_cert fails closed on an empty stake model before it reads a vote. Go alone accepts with no stake source, so Go alone needed this, and it is Go's own weighted road it is brought up to. The predicate is AuthorizesExport, not an equality on Quasar. The weighted road is fail-closed by construction — its tier switch ends in ErrQCUnknownTier — and an equality here would be allow-by-omission: Horizon sits above Quasar on the ladder, so the day it becomes attestable a Horizon cert would cross this road with no floor at all. Behaviour is identical today, because Verify refuses any tier that is not Nova or Quasar before this line; the rung's own predicate makes tomorrow safe by construction rather than by review. Nova keeps no such floor and must not grow one: it authorizes only local execution the chain can still reorg away, and a small chain has to be able to make local progress. The Nova case pins that. Not reachable on a stake-wired chain, which takes the weighted road, and not mintable — quasarAttestor, the one Quasar producer, is wired only when a stake source is present, so a stake-less chain has no export cert of its own. It had to ARRIVE. Fail-closed once closed, at no cost to the deployment that has always run Nova-only. TestExportCommitteeFloorHoldsOnTheCountOnlyRoad is the regression, on the road TestExportNeedsAByzantineCommittee could not reach: a stake-less engine whose committee is exactly n, and a certificate unanimous over it declaring the quorum it derives, so nothing but the committee can refuse it. It admits at n of one, two and three without this clause. Also widens the reject table's G2 identity to its real width. At 95 bytes it died at the proof-width gate and never reached the decode it exists to test — a green duplicate of the short-proof row above it. At 96 it is refused where the frozen corpus records the refusal. Co-authored-by: Hanzo Dev <[email protected]>
Lux Consensus
Lux is not merely adding post-quantum signatures to a chain; it defines a hybrid finality architecture for DAG-native consensus, with protocol-agnostic threshold lifecycle, post-quantum threshold sealing, and cross-chain propagation of Horizon finality.
See LP-105 §Claims and evidence for the canonical claims/evidence table and the ten architectural commitments — single source of truth.
What decides finality
engine/chain is the engine luxd builds — chains/manager.go calls
consensuschain.NewRuntime and injects a BLS VoteVerifier. It decides by
metastable sampling to β-confidence and records the decision on the ladder in
engine/chain/finality.go:
Photon → Wave → Nova → Quasar → Horizon
Nova is a strict majority of stake and authorizes LOCAL execution; it is
reorgable. Quasar is a strict two-thirds of stake and is the export rung —
bridges, DEX settlement, cross-chain, validator-set transitions. Both floors have
one definition, config.TwoThirdsStakeFloor and config.HalfStakeFloor, which
the certificate verifier enforces and the parameter sizer derives α from, so the
count threshold cannot drift from the stake predicate.
The certificate (engine/chain/cert.go) is the portable
witness of a decision, not a second decider: α distinct validators each sign
ACCEPT over one position, nothing is aggregated, and any node holding the votes
assembles byte-identical bytes.
The standard is written down. The signed message, the certificate wire form,
both stake floors, the ladder's authorizations and the committee parameters are
emitted from those definitions into
conformance/corpus.json. An implementation in
another language is conformant when it reproduces that file exactly. Regenerate
with go test ./conformance -update; a diff there is a protocol change.
Of the packages below, engine/chain uses protocol/quasar and no other.
Quasar Family of Consensus
Quasar is the consensus engine for the Lux network. It provides unified consensus for linear chains (P-Chain, C-Chain) and DAG chains (X-Chain) with post-quantum finality via three independent cryptographic signing paths.
Sub-Protocols
| Protocol | Role | Package |
|---|---|---|
| Photon | K-of-N committee selection via Fisher-Yates sampling with luminance-weighted reputation | protocol/photon |
| Wave | Per-round threshold voting with FPC (Fast Probabilistic Consensus) | protocol/wave |
| Focus | Confidence accumulation: beta consecutive successes = local finality | protocol/focus |
| Nova | Linear chain consensus mode (P-Chain, C-Chain) -- wraps Ray | protocol/nova |
| Nebula | DAG consensus mode (X-Chain) -- wraps Field | protocol/nebula |
| Prism | DAG geometry: frontiers, cuts, uniform peer sampling | protocol/prism |
| Horizon | DAG order-theory: reachability, LCA, transitive closure, skip lists | protocol/horizon |
| Flare | DAG certificate/skip detection via 2f+1 quorum | protocol/flare |
| Ray | Linear chain finality driver: Wave + Focus + Sink | protocol/ray |
| Field | DAG finality driver: Wave + safe-prefix commit | protocol/field |
| Quasar | BLS + Pulsar + ML-DSA threshold signing, epoch management | protocol/quasar |
Signing Modes
Each cryptographic layer is independently toggleable:
| Mode | Layers | Use Case |
|---|---|---|
| BLS-only | BLS12-381 threshold | Fastest classical consensus |
| BLS + ML-DSA | BLS + FIPS 204 ML-DSA-65 | Dual with PQ identity proof |
| BLS + Pulsar | BLS + Ring-LWE 2-round threshold | Dual with PQ threshold proof |
| BLS + Pulsar + ML-DSA | All three in parallel | Full Quasar (triple mode) |
IsTripleMode() returns true when all three paths are configured.
TripleSignRound1 runs BLS + Pulsar + ML-DSA signing in parallel goroutines.
PQ Mode Selection (Configurable)
The active mode is selectable at runtime via config.PQMode or the
CONSENSUS_PQ_MODE env var. Defined in config/pq_mode.go:
| Mode | Env value | Maps to wire policy |
|---|---|---|
BLSOnly |
bls |
PolicyQuorum |
BLSPlusMLDSA |
bls-mldsa |
PolicyPQ |
BLSPlusCorona |
bls-rt |
PolicyPZ |
BLSPlusGroth16 |
bls-z |
PolicyQuantum (placeholder) |
TripleQuantum |
triple |
PolicyQuantum |
Run bench/pq_modes_bench_test.go for measured per-mode signing /
aggregation / verify costs and cert sizes. Storage and cert size
trade-offs:
| Mode | Sign | Agg | Verify | Cert | Storage 10K |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bls | 312 µs | 8.6 ms | 714 µs | 123 B | 1.17 MB |
| bls-mldsa | 369 µs | 8.5 ms | 3.4 ms | 69 KB | 665 MB |
| bls-rt | 39 ms | 3.3 s | 1.6 ms | 33 KB | 318 MB |
| triple | 40 ms | 3.3 s | 4.3 ms | 102 KB | 981 MB |
Pulsar / triple include the full 2-round Pulsar threshold protocol
(github.com/luxfi/pulsar/threshold — Pulsar is Lux's variant with
DKG2 and Pulsar-SHA3 hash suite). Production parameters M=8, N=7,
LogN=8 (ring degree 256), Q=2^48-ish: classical 2^142, quantum 2^130.
Cert-size floor of ~33 KB is set by the (C, Z, Delta) ring polynomials;
protocol/quasar/cert_size_compare_test.go measures and verifies this.
Architecture
consensus/
protocol/
photon/ Committee selection (Emitter + Luminance)
wave/ Threshold voting + FPC
fpc/ Fast Probabilistic Consensus selector
focus/ Confidence counter (beta tracker)
prism/ DAG cuts, frontiers, uniform sampling
horizon/ DAG reachability, LCA, skip lists
flare/ DAG cert/skip classification (2f+1)
ray/ Linear chain driver (Nova uses this)
field/ DAG finality driver (Nebula uses this)
nova/ Linear chain consensus mode
nebula/ DAG consensus mode
chain/ Block interface primitives
quasar/ BLS + Pulsar + ML-DSA threshold signing
engine/ Consensus engine (Chain, DAG, PQ wrappers)
core/ Core types, DAG structures
types/ Block, Vote, Config, Bag
config/ Parameter presets (single, local, testnet, mainnet)
runtime/ VM wiring (chain IDs, validators, logging)
pkg/wire/ Wire protocol credentials (ML-DSA-44/65/87 + BLS + Ed25519)
bench/ Benchmarks
version/ Re-exports github.com/luxfi/version
Consensus Flow
Linear Chains (Nova)
Photon (select committee) -> Wave (threshold vote) -> Focus (count beta) -> Ray (decide) -> Sink
DAG Chains (Nebula)
Photon (select committee) -> Wave (threshold vote per frontier vertex)
-> Flare (cert/skip) -> Horizon (safe prefix) -> Field (commit ordered prefix) -> Committer
Quasar PQ Finality
After consensus decision, the Quasar signing layer produces threshold certificates:
- BLS: single-round threshold share via
crypto/threshold - Pulsar: 2-round Ring-LWE threshold via
luxfi/corona/threshold - ML-DSA-65: single-round FIPS 204 identity signature
All three run in parallel. A block is quantum-final when all configured certificate layers are valid.
Key Hierarchy
| Layer | Key Type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Node-ID | Ed25519 | P2P transport auth |
| Validator-BLS | BLS12-381 | Classical finality votes |
| Validator-PQ | Pulsar (Ring-LWE) | PQ finality shares |
| Validator-ID | ML-DSA-65 (FIPS 204) | PQ identity attestation |
| Wallet (EVM) | secp256k1 | User transaction signatures |
| Wallet (X-Chain) | secp256k1 | UTXO locking |
Quick Start
import "github.com/luxfi/consensus"
chain := consensus.NewChain(consensus.DefaultConfig())
ctx := context.Background()
if err := chain.Start(ctx); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
defer chain.Stop()
block := &consensus.Block{
ID: consensus.NewID(),
ParentID: consensus.GenesisID,
Height: 1,
Payload: []byte("Hello, Lux!"),
}
if err := chain.Add(ctx, block); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
Configuration
// Auto-configure based on validator count
params := consensus.GetConfig(21) // mainnet defaults
// Or use presets
consensus.SingleValidatorParams() // 1 node, dev
consensus.LocalParams() // 5 nodes, local
consensus.TestnetParams() // 11 nodes, testnet
consensus.MainnetParams() // 21 nodes, production
Benchmarks
Measured on Apple M1 Max:
| Component | Operation | Time/Op |
|---|---|---|
| Wave | Vote round | 3.38 us |
| Photon | K-of-N selection | 3.03 us |
| Luminance | Brightness update | 72 ns |
ZAP wire protocol (measured, bench/):
| Configuration | Throughput |
|---|---|
| Single connection | 114K TPS |
| 20 parallel connections | 376K TPS |
| 50 conns + batch 1000 | 20.26M TPS |
Testing
GOWORK=off go test ./...
GOWORK=off go test -bench=. ./bench/
Security Model
- Pre-quantum: Attacker must corrupt >= 1/3 stake to fork
- Q-day (BLS broken): Lattice certificates prevent unsafe finalization
- Post-quantum: Security rests on Module-LWE (Pulsar) + Module-LWE/SIS (ML-DSA)
License
BSD 3-Clause. See LICENSE.