Round-based distributed protocols

The body is round

Goals

• Sans-I/O API. That is, bring your own async libraries, or don't.

• Generic over signer/verifier/signature types, so you can use whatever your blockchain uses.

• Support parallelization where possible, to offload expensive cryptographic operations into spawned tasks (but since it's Sans-I/O, it's up to you to make use of that functionality).

• Provide tools for unit and integration testing of the protocols.

• Support generating malicious behavior proofs and correctness proofs with bundled signed messages.

• Support caching messages intended for the next round and then applying them when it starts (since some nodes can finalize a round before others and send out a new batch of messages).

Assumptions

We try to find the balance between supporting the majority of protocols and keeping the API simple. Currently we operate under the following assumptions:

• A protocol consists of several rounds.
• A round generates messages to send out without any additional external input, then waits for messages from other parties. When it receives enough messages, it can be finalized.
• On finalization, a round can return the result, halt with an error, or continue to another round.
• A round can generate several direct messages (each going to a specific party).
• Additionally, a round can generate one echo-broadcasted message, for which it will be ensured that each party received the same message.