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Open Representative Voting (ORV)

Open Representative Voting (ORV) is Kakitu's consensus mechanism. It is a delegated voting system where account holders assign their balance weight to representatives, who then vote on the validity of transactions.

Overview

sequenceDiagram
    participant User as Account Holder
    participant Node as Kakitu Node
    participant PRs as Principal Representatives
    participant Network

    User->>Node: Submit signed block
    Node->>Network: Broadcast block
    Network->>PRs: Block received
    PRs->>Network: Votes broadcast
    Network->>Network: Votes aggregated
    Note over Network: Quorum: >67% online weight
    Network->>User: Block confirmed (~1 second)

Key Concepts

Voting Weight

Every kshs_ address can hold delegated voting weight. When an account sets its representative, it delegates its entire balance to that representative's voting weight.

Representative X voting weight = sum of balances of all accounts
                                  that have delegated to X

Delegating does not move funds — you retain full custody of your KSHS. It only assigns your balance as voting weight to your chosen representative.

Online Voting Weight

The network tracks online voting weight — the sum of weight held by representatives that have been recently active (sent votes within a rolling time window).

Quorum is calculated against online voting weight, not total supply. This ensures the network can confirm transactions even if a large portion of the supply is held in cold storage with no active representative.

Quorum

A block is confirmed when representatives holding more than 67% of the current online voting weight have voted for it.

quorum_delta = 0.67 × online_voting_weight

Once this threshold is crossed, the block is confirmed and cemented.

Vote Messages

When a representative votes, it broadcasts a vote message to its peers:

{
  "account": "kshs_REPRESENTATIVE",
  "signature": "VOTE_SIGNATURE",
  "sequence": "42",
  "blocks": [
    "A170D51B94E00371ACE76E35AC81DC9405D5D04D4CEBC399AEACE07AE05DD293"
  ]
}
  • sequence is a monotonically increasing counter preventing vote replay attacks
  • blocks is a list of block hashes this vote applies to

Final Votes

A representative can emit a final vote with sequence = 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF to signal that their vote is definitive and they will not revote. Final votes accelerate confirmation by allowing nodes to stop waiting for additional vote messages.

Principal Representatives

A Principal Representative (PR) holds at least 0.1% of online voting weight. PR votes are rebroadcast by the nodes that receive them, propagating rapidly across the network.

Non-PR representative votes are not rebroadcast — they count toward quorum but don't propagate further.

The PR threshold means a small number of well-funded, reliable representatives carry the most influence on confirmation speed.

Fork Resolution

If two competing blocks are broadcast for the same account position (a fork), representatives must choose one:

  1. Each representative votes for the block it saw first
  2. Votes are collected and cumulative weight tracked
  3. The block that first accumulates 67% of online voting weight wins
  4. The losing block is discarded by all nodes

Kakitu's ORV makes 51% attacks expensive — an attacker would need to acquire 51% of online voting weight, which represents a majority of the entire circulating supply.

Election Lifecycle

  1. Block received — node receives a new block and starts an election
  2. Vote gossip — representatives exchange votes with peers
  3. Quorum — once 67% online weight is accumulated, the block is confirmed
  4. Cemented — the node records the block as locally irreversible (confirmation height updated)
  5. Election closed — resources for the election are freed

Elections that fail to reach quorum (e.g., due to a fork) remain active until resolved.

Delegating Your Representative

Change your representative at any time with a zero-fee change block:

curl -s -d '{
  "action": "account_representative_set",
  "wallet": "YOUR_WALLET_ID",
  "account": "kshs_YOUR_ACCOUNT",
  "representative": "kshs_NEW_REPRESENTATIVE"
}' http://localhost:7076

Choosing a reliable, decentralized representative helps the network confirm transactions faster and makes the network more resilient.

Anti-Spam: PoW and Throttling

ORV alone does not prevent spam — any account can create valid blocks. Spam prevention comes from:

  1. Proof-of-Work — each block requires computational work, raising the cost of flooding
  2. Election throttling — the number of simultaneous active elections is bounded
  3. Priority queuing — elections from accounts with a history of valid activity receive priority

Comparison to Other Consensus Mechanisms

Mechanism Energy use Finality Decentralization
Proof of Work (Bitcoin) Very high Probabilistic Centralized by mining pools
Proof of Stake (ETH) Low Probabilistic with finality Centralized by staking pools
DPoS (EOS) Low Fast Limited (21 BPs)
ORV (Kakitu) Minimal Deterministic Open — anyone can be a rep