Solidus Protocol

The original blockchain at the core of the Solidus Network — a layer-1 purpose-built as a trust anchor for decentralized identity, verifiable credentials, and identity-bound staking.

• Consensus: HotStuff-style Byzantine Fault Tolerant (pacemaker, quorum certificates), ~1–2 s single-block finality
• Cryptography: Ed25519 per-validator signatures, BLS12-381 aggregates, BBS+ on BLS12-381 for selective-disclosure credentials, BLAKE3-256 everywhere (state, tx, block)
• State machine: RocksDB with dedicated column families for accounts, dids, credentials, validators, receipts, blocks; sparse Merkle commitments
• DID method: did:solidus — see did-solidus-spec
• Public testnet: JSON-RPC at https://rpc.solidus.network, block explorer at https://explorer.solidus.network

What's in this repo

Two generations share this workspace. v1 is the chain running the live testnet today; v2 is a ground-up rebuild of execution, consensus, and storage — a separate network with its own chain-id that does not touch the live testnet.

v1 (the live testnet chain):

crates/
├── solidus-consensus   # HotStuff state machine, pacemaker, leader election (VRF)
├── solidus-crypto      # Ed25519, BLS12-381, BLAKE3, BBS+ (zkryptium 0.6, byte-compatible with @solidus-network/bbs)
├── solidus-node        # Validator binary — bootstraps state, p2p, RPC, consensus
├── solidus-p2p         # libp2p transport, gossipsub, peer discovery
├── solidus-rpc         # JSON-RPC server — solidus_didResolve, solidus_credentialResolve, getValidators, etc.
├── solidus-state       # Executor, store, state-root computation
└── solidus-txns        # Transaction payloads (DidCreate, DidUpdate, DidDeactivate, CredentialIssue, ...) + handlers

v2 (the two-lane rebuild — code public, no public v2 network yet):

crates/
├── solidus-exec         # Two-lane executor: parallel payment lane + serialized identity lane, differential-tested vs a serial oracle
├── solidus-state-tree   # BLAKE3 sparse Merkle tree, O(touched) root apply
├── solidus-store2       # v2 storage engine (RocksDB column families, durable block writes)
├── solidus-mempool-dag  # DAG mempool / transaction dissemination
├── solidus-hotstuff2    # Consensus core + TLA+ model (crates/solidus-hotstuff2/tla+/)
├── solidus-p2p2         # v2 libp2p networking
├── solidus-rpc2         # v2 JSON-RPC surface
├── solidus-node2        # v2 node assembly + load harness
├── solidus-noded        # Deployable node daemon: keygen, config generation, faucet
├── solidus-subnet       # Subnet scaffolding
└── solidus-evm          # EVM subnet scaffold + identity precompiles

v2 — read this before quoting any number

• Testnet-grade and unaudited. No external audit has occurred on any part of this protocol. What an auditor would need to start is written up per component in docs/v2-audit-readiness.md.
• The headline target — 50K TPS sustained on a 21-validator, 3-region network — has never been measured. Every published figure was measured on one 10-core laptop and is labelled as such. The exact commands, hardware, and raw unedited outputs are in docs/v2-benchmarks.md and docs/bench/. If you cannot reproduce a number, open an issue.
• There is no public v2 network yet — no v2 RPC, no faucet, nothing to join. You can run the full stack locally today: docs/v2-validator-join.md is a rehearsed runbook (keygen → config → 4-validator devnet → faucet-funded transfer), and it states the current limits honestly: the committee is config-static and there is no state-sync yet, so mid-flight join and restart-recovery are named open work items.
• No token. There is no $SLDS or any other token; nothing here mints, promises, or redeems value.
• did:solidus is registered in the W3C DID Method Registry — PR w3c/did-extensions#713 merged 2026-07-04, listed at w3.org/TR/did-extensions-methods. Registration records that a method exists and is documented; it is not a W3C endorsement, and it says nothing about whether this implementation is secure. (Solidus is a DIF Associate Member.)

Design docs: docs/v2-execution-model.md · docs/v2-consensus.md · docs/v2-wire-format.md

Status

v1: live on testnet, still producing blocks. The committee is whatever solidus_getValidators returns — this page does not restate a count, because one typed here is wrong the next time the set changes.

⚠ The testnet is currently idle, emitting an empty heartbeat block roughly every 10 minutes (tx_count: 0). Do not read its current block rate as throughput. During its productive period it sustained about 1 block/second (measured from on-chain timestamp_ms over 20 000 consecutive canonical blocks: 0.98 s/block, then 1.25 s/block), which is where the ~1–2 s finality figure above comes from. Re-measure it yourself with solidus_getBlockBySeq rather than trusting this paragraph.

Mainnet launch is gated on independent security audit.

v2: code, benchmark harness, and local-devnet tooling are public in this repo as of 2026-07-14. No public v2 network exists yet; a mainnet-candidate is not a mainnet.

Build

cargo build --release

Run a local devnet

solidus-node is subcommand-driven. Generate a genesis + validator set, then run them:

# genesis.json, validator-N/ dirs and keys under ./testnet
target/release/solidus-node genesis \
  --validators 4 \
  --output ./testnet \
  --chain-id solidus-devnet-1

# all validators in one process, RPC on 127.0.0.1:9944
target/release/solidus-node dev-testnet \
  --testnet-dir ./testnet \
  --rpc-port 9944

solidus-node run --config config.toml starts a single node against an existing config; --help lists the rest (peer-id, canon-dump, sign-transfer).

Confirm it is alive:

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:9944 \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"solidus_chainInfo","params":[]}'

A freshly generated chain contains no DIDs, so solidus_didResolve returns null on it until you create one — issue a DID with @solidus-network/sdk (did.create) and resolve that. Against the public testnet, resolve any DID that exists there.

Shipped features

• W3C DID Method did:solidus — all seven DID Core gaps closed (key rotation, deactivated-DID resolution metadata, full verificationMethod/relationship surface on chain, parameterised network in identifier, controller reassignment, versionId in resolution metadata)
• W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0 (validFrom / validUntil / @context v2)
• BBS+ selective disclosure end-to-end — a holder can reveal "over 18" without disclosing the underlying date of birth
• SD-JWT VC issuance and verification (EUDI Wallet-compatible reference libraries), including KB-JWT, status-list revocation, and nested-path disclosure
• HotStuff BFT with TC formation correctness fix (handles the case where the local node misses a peer's Vote), committee surface via getValidators

Reference clients

• @solidus-network/sdk — TypeScript SDK with DID, credential, BBS+ and SD-JWT VC primitives
• Solidus Verify — production KYC service issuing BBS+ credentials (source not public)
• Solidus Identity — self-sovereign identity wallet, credential holder, OIDC bridge (source not public)

License

Apache-2.0.