The paper discusses transaction order finality as a fundamental aspect for determining the state of a blockchain system. It presents key shades of finality, such as log finality and state finality, and emphasizes their importance in system design and error management. The authors propose an initial design sketch for an ideal layer 2 solution that considers these finality properties and related trade-offs, thus enhancing our understanding of blockchain architecture and providing insights for fault handling in decentralized networks.
The main contribution of this paper is that transaction order finality should be viewed as the key for determining system state. Efficient representation is just an optimization.
We identify the following shades of finality: log finality, transaction order finality, state finality, and checkpoint finality, which are crucial for reasoning about blockchain design.
Considering how and when these finality properties should be achieved, we developed a preliminary design sketch for an 'ideal' layer 2 system, discussing trade-offs involved.
This paper highlights the importance of finality properties in handling errors due to Byzantine actions or software defects, contributing valuable insights to blockchain system architecture.
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