Mysticeti BFT Consensus

Understanding Realm's 25ms finality consensus mechanism

Overview

Realm uses Mysticeti, a DAG-based BFT consensus protocol that achieves sub-second finality with high throughput. Unlike traditional BFT protocols, Mysticeti allows parallel block proposal and achieves consensus without leader rotation delays.

Key Properties

25ms Finality - Transactions are final in ~25ms
100k+ TPS - High throughput for trading workloads
Byzantine Fault Tolerant - Tolerates up to 1/3 malicious validators
Deterministic - Same input always produces same output

Block Structure

block.protoprotobuf

message Block {
  uint64 height = 1;           // Block number
  Hash parent_hash = 2;        // Parent block hash
  Hash state_root = 3;         // Merkle root of state
  Timestamp timestamp = 4;     // Block timestamp
  repeated Transaction txs = 5; // Transactions
  Signature proposer_sig = 6;  // Proposer's Dilithium signature
}

Validator Set

The active validator set is determined by stake weight. Validators must:

Stake minimum 100,000 RLM
Run approved hardware (GPU required)
Maintain 99.9% uptime
Sign blocks with Dilithium-3