Major components, roles, and workflows

Validators

Responsible for producing blocks and validating transactions on the Core network. Becoming a validator requires registration with the network and locking up a refundable CORE deposit to be included into the validator set per the rules of the validator election. Anyone can deposit and become a validator on Core.

Relayers

Responsible for relaying BTC block headers to the Core network. In order to relay, a potential relayer must register with the network and lockup a refundable CORE deposit. Anyone can deposit and become a relayer on Core.

BTC Miners

The miners responsible for securing the Bitcoin network via PoW. In order to have their hash power factor into Satoshi Plus consensus, miners must delegate their hash power to a validator that either they or a third party run. Delegation is a non-destructive act, meaning that by delegating on Core they’re re-purposing their existing work vs choosing between securing Bitcoin and securing Core.

CORE Holders

Holders of the CORE currency, the base currency of the CORE chain. All holders of CORE are able to participate in staking by delegating their holdings to a validator.

Verifiers

Responsible for reporting malicious behaviors on the network. Anyone can act as a verifier in the Core network. Successful verification flags may result in slashing (rewards or stake) or jailing misbehaving validators.

Validator Election

The mechanism in which the top 21 validators are selected for inclusion in the validator set. Validators are elected in relation to their hybrid score each round.To ensure a more stable TPS, the “live” validators are updated every 200 blocks during the round so that other validators do not need to wait for “jailed” validators for the entirety of the round.

Hybrid Score

The output of the protocol function used in validator election calculations. The inputs to the function are the BTC hash power and CORE delegated to the validator.

Round

Cycle time for Core to update validator quorum and distribute rewards, which is currently set to 1 day. Each day, 21 validators with the highest hybrid scores are elected to the validator set, thereby becoming responsible for producing blocks on the Core network for the entirety of the round. At the last block of each round, the accumulated rewards for the round will be calculated and distributed and the validator quorum for the next round will also be determined.

Slot

Each round is divided into slots and all validators in the quorum take turns producing blocks repeatedly in a round robin manner until the end of the round. Currently, the slot length is set to 3 seconds. In each slot, an honest validator either produces a block or fails to do so.

Epoch

The cycle length for the system to check each validator’s status to exclude jailed validators from the quorum to prevent them from participating in the consensus to keep TPS more or less constant in a given round. Currently, epoch is set to 200 slots, which is 600 seconds or 10 minutes.