Network Architecture
DAG Mempool and Consensus
The DAG mempool is the stage where validators accept and order external messages without executing transactions.
Users submit external messages to nodes in the active validator set.
Validators publish these messages into the consensus protocol and periodically agree on a shared ordered queue.
Consensus remains secure as long as at least 2F+1 out of 3F+1 participants follow the protocol.
No transaction execution or state changes occur at this stage, significantly reducing network and computational overhead.
After agreement, the queue is deduplicated and passed to the collator.
This is the first phase of Tycho. It provides collators with a shared, Byzantine-fault-tolerant buffer of external messages.
Collator
The collator executes both external and internal messages, produces blocks, and updates the blockchain state. It requires:
the ordered external message queue from the DAG mempool;
the current blockchain state.
Because no network coordination is required, a collator can continuously produce blocks at full node capacity. Given the same inputs and deterministic execution, every node can locally derive identical blocks. As a result, finality only requires exchanging hashes and signatures, not full block data.
Blocks are produced in parallel for two linked chains:
Shard blocks, which contain transaction execution results.
Master blocks, which serve coordination and synchronization purposes. Finality is reached upon master block confirmation.
Verifier
The verifier checks that a master block hash is signed by validators controlling more than two-thirds of the total stake.
Nodes exchange only signatures on the master block hash.
Once signatures exceeding the two-thirds threshold are collected, the master block can be propagated to network clients such as light nodes.
Since the master block references the latest shard block, separate shard block verification is unnecessary.
Interoperability
Within the TetraChain ecosystem, Tycho-based networks use the same account and message primitives as TON. Although block-level execution and structure differ, this allows consistent handling of messages and accounts across TetraChain applications.
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