Protocol Design Overview¶

This section covers the technical design of the Kakitu protocol in depth. It is intended for developers, researchers, and node operators who want to understand exactly how Kakitu works at the protocol level.

Design Principles¶

Kakitu is built around three core principles:

Fee-free — All transfer of value is free. Spam prevention uses computational Proof-of-Work, not fees.
Instant finality — Transactions confirm in under one second under normal network conditions.
Minimal energy use — No mining. Consensus uses votes, not computation.

These properties emerge from the combination of the Block Lattice data structure and Open Representative Voting (ORV) consensus.

High-Level Architecture¶

graph TD
    A[Account A] -->|Signs send block| B[Network]
    B -->|Broadcasts to| C[Representatives]
    C -->|Vote| D[Quorum Reached >67%]
    D -->|Confirmation| E[Account B creates receive block]
    E -->|Signs receive block| B

Block Lattice¶

Every account maintains its own account chain — a sequential list of state blocks. The account chain records the full history of state changes for that account.

Transfers between accounts are asynchronous: - The sender creates and broadcasts a send block - The receiver, at any later time, creates and broadcasts a receive block referencing the send

This asynchrony means the receiver does not need to be online when the sender sends.

Open Representative Voting (ORV)¶

Consensus is delegated. Account holders assign their balance weight to a representative. Representatives vote on blocks. The network tracks cumulative vote weight and confirms a block when enough weight has voted in its favor.

Protocol Layers¶

Layer	Components
Data	Block Lattice, account chains, ledger (LMDB)
Consensus	Open Representative Voting, vote gossip, confirmation height
Network	Live network (block/vote propagation), Bootstrap network (ledger sync)
Security	Ed25519 signatures, Blake2b hashing, PoW spam prevention

Section Index¶

Page	Content
Block Lattice	How the Block Lattice data structure works
Blocks	State block format and field definitions
Work	Proof-of-Work algorithm and difficulty
Networking	Live network, bootstrap, and peer discovery
ORV Consensus	Open Representative Voting in detail
Representatives	Role, selection, and principal representatives
Signing & Hashing	Ed25519 signatures and Blake2b hashing
Attack Mitigations	How the protocol defends against attacks
Original Whitepaper	The original Nano whitepaper (adapted for Kakitu)