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Block Structure

Introduction​

A block is the primary data structure by which network nodes communicate information about the state of the Casper Network. We briefly describe here the format of this data structure.

Data fields​

A block consists of the following:

  • a block_hash
  • a header
  • a body

Each of these fields is detailed in the subsequent sections.

block_hash​

The block_hash is the blake2b256 hash of the header.

The block header contains the following fields:

  • parent_hashes
    • a list of block_hashes giving the parents of the block
  • justifications
    • a list of block_hashes giving the justifications of the block (see consensus description in part A for more details)
  • a summary of the global state, including
    • the root hash of the global state trie before executing the deploys in this block (pre_state_hash)
    • the root hash of the global state trie after executing the deploys in this block (post_state_hash)
    • the list of currently bonded validators, and their stakes
  • the blake2b256 hash of the body of the block
  • the time the block was created
  • the protocol version the block was executed with
  • the number of deploys in the block
  • the human-readable name corresponding to this instance of the Casper Network (chain_id)
  • an indicator for whether this message is intended as a valid block or merely a ballot (see consensus description in part A for more details)

Body​

The block body contains an ordered list of DeployHashes which refer to deploys, and an ordered list of DeployHashes for native transfers (which are specialized deploys that only transfer token between accounts). All deploys, including a specialization such as native transfer, can be broadly categorized as some unit of work that, when executed and committed, affect change to global state Global State. It should be noted that a valid block may contain no deploys and / or native transfers.

The block body also contains the public key of the validator that proposed the block.

Refer to the Deploy Serialization Standard for additional information on deploys and how they are serialized. Refer to Deploy Serialization Standard for how blocks are serialized.