IntroductionThis is the final topic (but not the final blog) in the MonadBFT Explained series. In this post, we’ll take a look at the foundation of RaptorCast, a messaging layer designed to make block propagation more efficient. In the previous blog, I covered MonadBFT but intentionally skipped Section 5 of the paper, which describes the block propagation and recovery process. That section does not go into much detail about which erasure coding protocol is used or how it is implemented. Inste...

IntroductionThis is the final topic (but not the final blog) in the MonadBFT Explained series. In this post, we’ll take a look at the foundation of RaptorCast, a messaging layer designed to make block propagation more efficient. In the previous blog, I covered MonadBFT but intentionally skipped Section 5 of the paper, which describes the block propagation and recovery process. That section does not go into much detail about which erasure coding protocol is used or how it is implemented. Inste...

IntroductionRecently there has been a lot of hype around the topic of parallel execution, and today we are going to dive into one of the approaches that can also be used to achieve it, the consensusless protocol called FastPay. You might not have heard this name before, but you may be surprised to learn that many projects such as Sui, Linera, and Pod have adopted its concepts to reduce latency, enable parallel processing, and allow horizontal scalability. In this post, we will explore the ide...

IntroductionRecently there has been a lot of hype around the topic of parallel execution, and today we are going to dive into one of the approaches that can also be used to achieve it, the consensusless protocol called FastPay. You might not have heard this name before, but you may be surprised to learn that many projects such as Sui, Linera, and Pod have adopted its concepts to reduce latency, enable parallel processing, and allow horizontal scalability. In this post, we will explore the ide...

IntroductionFinally, we are at the final blog in our MonadBFT series. In the previous blog part 3, I have explained the issues of naive block propagation which can lead to bottleneck and are not scalable. But the main focus was to explore and learn about the basics of fountain or rateless erasure code and Raptor code, starting from the LT codes and improving it with precoding. So I hope you get the idea of how Raptor codes work in general as in this blog we will build on the Raptor code and e...

IntroductionFinally, we are at the final blog in our MonadBFT series. In the previous blog part 3, I have explained the issues of naive block propagation which can lead to bottleneck and are not scalable. But the main focus was to explore and learn about the basics of fountain or rateless erasure code and Raptor code, starting from the LT codes and improving it with precoding. So I hope you get the idea of how Raptor codes work in general as in this blog we will build on the Raptor code and e...

IntroductionReaching consensus on the order of transactions within a distributed system is one of the fundamental problems that blockchains are trying to solve. Tendermint (currently known as CometBFT) is one of the novel solutions used in many blockchains as a consensus engine, especially in the Cosmos ecosystem. Tendermint is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol used to order transactions in a distributed network to ensure that all honest nodes agree on the same value, even i...

IntroductionReaching consensus on the order of transactions within a distributed system is one of the fundamental problems that blockchains are trying to solve. Tendermint (currently known as CometBFT) is one of the novel solutions used in many blockchains as a consensus engine, especially in the Cosmos ecosystem. Tendermint is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus protocol used to order transactions in a distributed network to ensure that all honest nodes agree on the same value, even i...

IntroductionMonad recently released the MonadBFT paper, along with a series of blog posts explaining its consensus design and block propagation. With major updates to their documentation as well, I think it’s a great time to dig in and explore the protocol in more depth. In this blog series, I’ll explain the core ideas behind MonadBFT and the problems it aims to solve. The main sources are the MonadBFT paper [1], along with Monad’s blog posts and updated documentation. I’ll break things down ...

IntroductionMonad recently released the MonadBFT paper, along with a series of blog posts explaining its consensus design and block propagation. With major updates to their documentation as well, I think it’s a great time to dig in and explore the protocol in more depth. In this blog series, I’ll explain the core ideas behind MonadBFT and the problems it aims to solve. The main sources are the MonadBFT paper [1], along with Monad’s blog posts and updated documentation. I’ll break things down ...

1. OverviewData availability (DA) is crucial to the functionality and security of blockchains. In traditional monolithic blockchain structures, full nodes retrieve blocks from peers to verify the integrity of the entire history of their chain based on predefined rules. This process relies on the assumption that data on the blockchain remains consistently "available" for access by all nodes in the network. This principle holds not just for layer-1 blockchains but also for layer-2 blockchains, ...

1. OverviewData availability (DA) is crucial to the functionality and security of blockchains. In traditional monolithic blockchain structures, full nodes retrieve blocks from peers to verify the integrity of the entire history of their chain based on predefined rules. This process relies on the assumption that data on the blockchain remains consistently "available" for access by all nodes in the network. This principle holds not just for layer-1 blockchains but also for layer-2 blockchains, ...

IntroductionFollowing the previous blog, where we explored how general pipelined two-phase BFT protocols work, we’re now ready to dive into MonadBFT. We’ll begin by introducing the tail-forking problem, a critical flaw commonly found in traditional two-phase BFT protocols. After that, we’ll explore a straightforward idea that helps prevent it but ends up introducing a new problem. Finally, we’ll study how MonadBFT solves tail-forking without running into that new problem.The Tail-Forking Prob...

IntroductionFollowing the previous blog, where we explored how general pipelined two-phase BFT protocols work, we’re now ready to dive into MonadBFT. We’ll begin by introducing the tail-forking problem, a critical flaw commonly found in traditional two-phase BFT protocols. After that, we’ll explore a straightforward idea that helps prevent it but ends up introducing a new problem. Finally, we’ll study how MonadBFT solves tail-forking without running into that new problem.The Tail-Forking Prob...