Consensus
Dock is built on Substrate and uses the consensus mechanism offered by Substrate which is a hybrid as it separates block production and finality and achieves them through different methods. The finality is achieved through a finality gadget called GRANDPA (GHOST-based Recursive ANcestor Deriving Prefix Agreement). It finalizes chains rather than individual blocks and offers provable finality.
The Dock network started with a Proof of Authority (PoA) network and therefore the block production algorithm in this phase was Aura, which was transitioned to a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus.
When Dock transitions into utilizing PoS, the block production algorithm changes from Aura to BABE (Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension protocol) which selects a validator for each slot (interval of time) randomly using a VRF (Verifiable Random Function). BABE is similar to IOHK's Ouroboros Praos.
For development purposes, we will bundle instant-seal consensus which produces a block as soon as the transaction reaches the node rather than wait for blocks to be produced at a fixed interval. This is helpful when running the SDK against a local node during development.
Network Explorers
Two explorers are available to query the Dock blockchain and view usage metrics:
When the Dock network transitioned to PoS, a new blockchain was created from genesis and the previous PoA blockchain stopped supporting new transactions. The PoA blockchain is still accessible for historical purposes and hosted separately by Subscan: Dock PoA Mainnet.
Last updated