Make snowman use snowflake directly instead of snowball #3403
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Snowball was introduced in order to improve the stability of snowflake, by taking into account the history when returning the preference. However, if deployed with a configuration where the preference is small enough, and a network partition causes a 50-50 split of the stake, it can actually backfire, as described in 6e1a905. Additionally, latest research [1] points out that snowflake suffices for snowman. This commit removes snowball from snowman and adds a test that simulates a mixed network which runs snowman with and without snowball, and ensures that a mixed network still converges. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.14250 Signed-off-by: Yacov Manevich <[email protected]>
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michaelkaplan13
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aaronbuchwald,
joshua-kim and
ceyonur
marun
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Sep 27, 2024
marun
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Sep 29, 2024
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Why this should be merged
Snowball was introduced in order to improve the stability of snowflake, by taking into account the history when returning the preference.
However, if deployed with a configuration where the preference is small enough, and a network partition causes a 50-50 split of the stake, it can actually backfire, as described in 6e1a905.
Additionally, latest research [1] points out that snowflake suffices for snowman.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.14250
How this works
This commit removes snowball from snowman by substituting the snowball factory snowman uses, with a snowflake factory.
How this was tested
Added a test that simulates a mixed network which runs snowman with and without snowball, and ensures that a mixed network still converges.
Also ran a modified node on Fuji and monitored its consensus related metrics, and it seemed functioning well.