Verifier responsibilities

The Nyzo cycle is an evolving democracy. Decisions regarding admission to this democracy are obviously important to maintenance of the health of the system. However, decisions regarding removal are equally important.

With the introduction of the sentinel in Nyzo version 478, verifiers were removed from the cycle much less frequently due to inability to produce blocks. However, this resulted in cycle performance issues. To address these cycle performance issues, a verifier performance score was added in Nyzo version 505, and enforcement of this score began in Nyzo version 508.

While the verifier performance score has worked reasonably well to this point, it does not account for all the responsibilities a verifier should fulfill to ensure good cycle performance. This page will explore some of these responsibilities necessary to ensure that all verifiers are performing their fair share of work to keep the cycle processing smoothly.

The most important functions of a verifier are:

• voting for blocks quickly at every height to help the cycle achieve consensus quickly
• producing blocks quickly for the verifier's assigned cycle position
• incorporating all available transactions into blocks, subject to transaction volume limits
• responding with correct information to certain messages from in-cycle verifiers
• voting for new verifiers in a manner that aims to increase cycle diversity

Eventually, the verifier performance score will likely account for all of these functions, and failure of a verifier to fulfill any one of them for an extended period of time will result in removal from the cycle. Currently, the performance score only considers block votes.