Breakthrough in Blockchain Technology: Sui Lutris Protocol

Blockchain technology has made significant progress since the birth of Bitcoin. With the emergence of new application scenarios such as games and NFTs, the industry has been exploring ways to improve technical efficiency, especially in terms of handling high loads and achieving real-time latency. Currently, L1 blockchains face two major challenges: one is to achieve high throughput while maintaining low latency, and the other is to ensure the long-term stability of the consensus protocol. At the same time, decentralization needs to be maintained through the dynamic participation and reconfiguration of validation nodes.

One way to increase throughput is to adopt a DAG-based consensus protocol, such as the narwhale/Bullshark used by Sui. These types of protocols allow the Blockchain to handle a large number of transactions simultaneously, making them very suitable for applications like games and NFTs. However, these protocols often result in delays of a few seconds, which can be a high time cost for ordinary transfers or game operations.

On the other hand, consensus-free protocols (such as FastPay) show great potential in reducing latency and increasing scalability. These protocols allow for fast transaction processing by eliminating the need for consensus, without requiring a total ordering of independent transactions that are processed in parallel. However, they are limited to a class of constrained simple Block operations, restricting the complexity of smart contracts that can be implemented and making it difficult to support dynamic reconfiguration of the validator set.

Although these methods show potential, they are currently mainly in the academic discussion stage and have not yet been widely applied in production-level Blockchains. Sui Lutris is an innovative protocol that combines the advantages of DAG-based consensus and non-consensus methods, achieving sub-second latency and sustained throughput of thousands of transactions per second. At the same time, Sui also retains the ability to execute complex contracts on shared objects, generate checkpoints, and reconfigure the validator set across periods.

Sui Lutris adopts a unique hybrid approach. For operations involving assets owned by a single owner (i.e., owned objects), the system uses a consistent broadcasting protocol among validators, achieving latency below consensus. For complex smart contracts involving shared objects, Sui Lutris relies on a consensus mechanism. Additionally, the protocol supports network maintenance operations, such as defining checkpoints and reconfiguring validators. This innovative strategy provides a method for transaction processing that combines both efficiency and security in a replicated Byzantine environment.

In Sui Lutris, the lifecycle of a transaction is as follows: the user creates and signs the transaction, sending it to the validating nodes for verification and signing. The client collects responses from the majority of validating nodes to form the transaction certificate, at which point the transaction reaches finality. For transactions involving only exclusive objects, execution can be processed immediately without waiting for the consensus engine. All certificates are forwarded to the DAG-based consensus protocol. After the total order of the consensus output certificates, the validating nodes execute transactions containing shared objects. Finally, a checkpoint is formed for each consensus submission, used to drive the reconfiguration protocol.

Sui Lutris also offers multiple features to support production-grade Blockchain operations:

1. Implement checkpoint protocol to generate the causal history of all transactions in the system for complete auditing and efficient synchronization.

2. Support reconfiguration at the end of each period, allowing changes to the validator set and their voting rights.

3. Securely "unlock" erroneously locked assets at the end of the period to minimize damage caused by potential vulnerabilities.

Sui Lutris provides robust technical support for the Sui Blockchain, enabling it to securely manage a large number of user assets. This protocol offers security proofs within the standard distributed system model, demonstrating its reliability in a partially synchronous Byzantine environment.