Vote Stapling

A vote staple is the unit of distrubition, creating a permanent voting context by combining multiple blocks to all be voted on and published to the network at once. Nodes transmit vote staples over the network and clients publish vote staples. If one block in the staple is invalid, all blocks are rejected and must be sent back through the voting process without the invalid operation(s).

Keeping the blocks and votes together increases efficiency and relieves the network from locating multiple pieces of data on the same operation. A staple is constructed from at least one block, and at least one vote. All votes within a single staple must be for the same blocks in the same order as the staple was constructed with. Additionally, a staple cannot contain mixed temporary and permanent votes.

To maximize efficiency, the network uses compressed staples. The more similar the included blocks and votes contents are, the more the staple can be compressed.