ledger-rs/doc/architecture.md

Architecture Decisions

UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output)-Style Postings

Value is stored as postings — signed amounts of a single asset owned by exactly one account. A positive posting is value controlled by the account; a negative posting is an offset position (issuance, external flow, or system balancing).

Account balance = sum of non-Inactive postings (Active + PendingInactive) for that (account, asset) pair. There is no mutable balance field to drift out of sync.

Consumed postings are marked inactive but never deleted, preserving a full audit trail.

Pure Core / Async Layer Separation

graph LR
    subgraph "kuatia-core (pure, sync, no IO)"
        V[validate_and_plan]
        S[select_postings]
        H[hash / transfer_id]
        T[Types & ToBytes]
    end
    subgraph "kuatia (async, IO)"
        L[Ledger]
        ST[Store sub-traits]
        SG[Saga steps]
    end
    L --> V
    L --> S
    L --> ST
    SG --> L
    SG --> ST

kuatia-core contains all validation logic with no IO, no async runtime, and near-zero dependencies. It can be tested with golden vectors, replayed deterministically, and embedded in no_std environments.

kuatia adds the async Store trait (used as dyn Store via trait objects) and composes the saga commit pipeline. The Ledger struct is non-generic — it holds an Arc<dyn Store>, which allows the legend! macro to define saga types with concrete LedgerCtx.

This separation ensures the auditable heart of the system is fully deterministic and independently testable.

Store Sub-Trait Architecture

The Store trait is a composite of seven focused sub-traits, each responsible for a single domain:

classDiagram
    class AccountStore {
        +get_account(id)
        +get_accounts(ids)
        +create_account(account)
        +append_account_version(account)
        +get_account_history(id)
        +list_accounts()
    }
    class PostingStore {
        +get_postings(ids)
        +get_postings_by_account(account, asset?, status?)
        +reserve_postings(ids, reservation)
        +release_postings(ids, reservation)
        +finalize_postings(deactivate, create)
    }
    class TransferStore {
        +get_transfer(id)
        +store_transfer(record)
        +get_transfers_for_account(account)
        +query_transfers(query)
    }
    class SagaStore {
        +save_saga(id, data)
        +list_pending_sagas()
        +delete_saga(id)
    }
    class EventStore {
        +append_event(event)
        +get_events_since(after_seq, limit)
    }
    class BookStore {
        +create_book(book)
        +get_book(id)
        +list_books()
    }
    class CommitStore {
        +commit_transfer(req)
    }
    class Store {
        <<composite>>
    }
    Store --|> AccountStore
    Store --|> PostingStore
    Store --|> TransferStore
    Store --|> SagaStore
    Store --|> EventStore
    Store --|> BookStore
    Store --|> CommitStore

CommitStore::commit_transfer is the single atomic commit boundary — it applies posting deactivations/creations, the transfer record, the both-sided account index, and events in one transaction, enforcing CappedOverdraft CAS guards and reservation ownership.

The store only persists and reads — all domain logic (balance computation, validation, policy enforcement) lives in the Ledger and kuatia-core.

Saga Commit Pipeline

The intent layer uses a saga-based pipeline that breaks the commit into four independently-persisted steps:

sequenceDiagram
    participant C as Caller
    participant L as Ledger
    participant R as ReserveStep
    participant V as ValidateStep
    participant F as FinalizeStep
    participant S as Store

    C->>L: commit(transfer)
    L->>R: execute
    R->>S: reserve_postings(ids)
    Note over S: Active → PendingInactive (atomic batch)
    R-->>L: reserved_postings tracked in LedgerCtx

    L->>V: execute
    V->>S: get_postings, get_accounts, get_postings_by_account
    V->>V: validate_and_plan() [pure]
    V-->>L: Plan stored in LedgerCtx

    L->>F: execute
    F->>S: finalize_postings(deactivate, create)
    Note over S: PendingInactive → Inactive + insert new
    F->>S: store_transfer(record)
    F-->>L: Receipt

    L-->>C: Receipt

On failure, legend compensates completed steps in LIFO order:

sequenceDiagram
    participant L as Legend
    participant F as FinalizeStep
    participant V as ValidateStep
    participant R as ReserveStep
    participant S as Store

    Note over L: Step 3 fails...
    L->>V: compensate
    Note over V: No-op (reads only)
    L->>R: compensate
    R->>S: release_postings(reserved)
    Note over S: PendingInactive → Active

Each step is a small, shard-local operation with automatic compensation on failure. This design avoids cross-shard transactions: no single step touches multiple shards atomically.

Raw Three-Phase Commit

A lower-level commit_atomic() method runs the traditional atomic pipeline in a single pass without reservation. Used internally by reverse() and available for callers who need direct control.

graph LR
    A[load] -->|LoadedState| B[plan]
    B -->|Plan| C[apply]
    C -->|Receipt| D[done]
    style A fill:#e1f5fe
    style B fill:#fff3e0
    style C fill:#e8f5e9

The three phases can also be called independently: load(), plan(), apply().

Content-Addressed Transfers

EnvelopeId is the double-SHA-256 of a transfer's canonical binary serialization. This serves two purposes:

• Idempotency — committing the same transfer twice returns the cached receipt instead of applying it again.
• Tamper evidence — any modification to a transfer's data changes its ID.

All domain types implement deterministic binary serialization (ToBytes trait) using big-endian encoding with a version prefix (CANONICAL_VERSION = 1).

Append-Only Account Versioning

Accounts are never modified in place. Each account mutation (freeze, unfreeze, close, or a policy/flags change) appends a new snapshot with an incremented version field (starts at 1 on creation). Note that transfers do not bump account versions — balances are derived from postings, not stored on the account.

The store enforces that each new version is exactly current + 1, preventing gaps or overwrites. The full version history is queryable via account_history().

Account Snapshot Pinning

Transfers can carry AccountSnapshotId values — pairs of (AccountId, snapshot_hash) recording which account versions the transfer was validated against.

During validation, if snapshots are provided, the current account state is hashed and compared. A mismatch produces AccountVersionMismatch, preventing TOCTOU (Time-Of-Check to Time-Of-Use) races where an account is mutated between load and apply.

The commit() convenience method auto-populates snapshots when none are provided.

Per-Asset Conservation

The conservation invariant is: for each asset, the sum of consumed posting values must equal the sum of created posting values.

Conservation boundaries are per-asset only. The book field on transfers and accounts is a transfer policy scope (which accounts/assets may participate) — it does not affect conservation enforcement, and it does not partition balances.

Account Policies

Each account has a policy controlling its balance floor and whether it may hold negative postings:

Policy	Balance floor	Negative postings	CAS guard
NoOverdraft	>= 0	No	No
CappedOverdraft { floor }	>= floor	Yes (down to floor)	Yes
UncappedOverdraft	None	Yes (unbounded)	No
SystemAccount	None	Yes	No
ExternalAccount	None	Yes	No

An overdraft is a negative posting assigned to the account to cover a shortfall. Only NoOverdraft forbids negative postings; validation rejects a negative posting on a NoOverdraft account. CappedOverdraft's floor (enforced in validation, with concurrency protected by CAS guards) bounds the negative balance; the other policies are unbounded.

CAS (Compare-And-Swap) Guards for CappedOverdraft

CappedOverdraft accounts have a balance floor that is not backed by the UTXO model alone — two concurrent transfers could each pass validation but together push the balance below the floor (write-skew).

The validation phase emits cas_guards: Vec<(AccountId, AssetId, Cent)> for these accounts. They are enforced atomically inside commit_transfer: before mutating any state it recomputes each guarded balance and aborts with a retryable Conflict if it changed since validation. The saga pipeline additionally isolates the consumed postings via the reserve step (Active → PendingInactive), stamping each reserved posting with a ReservationId so only the reserving saga can finalize or release it.

Other policies do not need CAS guards: NoOverdraft is fully UTXO-backed (you can only spend postings you own), and unconstrained policies have no floor to violate.

No Sequential Hash Chain

An earlier design linked each transfer to its predecessor via a hash chain, enforcing total ordering. This was removed because:

• UTXO double-spend prevention already prevents reordering attacks (a posting can only be consumed once).
• Content-addressed transfer IDs provide tamper evidence without chaining.
• Append-only account versioning prevents account state manipulation.
• The chain was a concurrency bottleneck — every transfer had to wait for its predecessor's hash.

Posting Selection

The intent layer hides UTXO complexity from callers. Every operation is expressed as one or more Movement { from, to, asset, amount } values. The resolve step aggregates net debits per (account, asset) across all movements, then for each pair with a positive net debit, the select_postings function uses a greedy largest-first algorithm:

1. Filter to active, positive postings of the target asset.
2. Sort by value descending.
3. Accumulate until the sum meets or exceeds the target.

If the selected sum exceeds the target, the resolve step creates a change posting returning the remainder to the sender — exactly like Bitcoin's change outputs.

Aggregating before selection means multiple movements debiting the same account share one selection pass, avoiding double-selection of the same postings.

Posting Lifecycle

Postings follow a three-state lifecycle managed by the saga pipeline:

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Active: created by finalize
    Active --> PendingInactive: reserve_postings
    PendingInactive --> Active: release_postings (compensation)
    PendingInactive --> Inactive: finalize_postings
    Active --> Active: release_postings (no-op)

State	Available	In balance	Description
Active	Yes	Yes	Available for consumption
PendingInactive	No	Yes	Reserved for a transfer. Reverts to Active on compensation
Inactive	No	No	Consumed. Kept for audit trail (void)

Batch semantics

reserve_postings and release_postings operate on batches with atomic semantics — if any posting fails validation, the entire batch is rejected and no state changes.

• reserve_postings(ids) — all postings must be Active; fails if any is not.
• release_postings(ids) — fails if any posting is Inactive (void); Active postings are a no-op, PendingInactive postings revert to Active.

This enables shard-local writes: each posting reservation is an independent operation on the posting's shard, with no cross-shard coordination needed.

Saga Composition

Internal pipeline steps

The saga pipeline is built from four legend::Step implementations that operate on LedgerCtx:

Step	Execute	Compensate	Retry
ResolveStep	Convert Transfer intent into concrete Envelope	No-op	No retry
ReservePostingsStep	Batch reserve postings Active → PendingInactive	Release all back to Active	3 retries
ValidateTransferStep	Load accounts/balances, run validate_and_plan()	No-op (reads only)	No retry
FinalizeTransferStep	PendingInactive → Inactive, create postings, store transfer, emit event	reverse(transfer_id)	3 retries

High-level composition steps

Higher-level steps compose over the intent-layer API for multi-transfer workflows:

Step	Execute	Compensate
PayMovementStep	Build pay transfer, ledger.commit(...)	ledger.reverse(receipt.transfer_id)
DepositMovementStep	Build deposit transfer, ledger.commit(...)	ledger.reverse(receipt.transfer_id)
WithdrawMovementStep	Build withdraw transfer, ledger.commit(...)	ledger.reverse(receipt.transfer_id)

Custom orchestration with legend

You can compose any combination of steps into a saga using the legend! macro. Legend drives the steps in order, retries on transient failures, and compensates completed steps in reverse (LIFO) on unrecoverable failure.

use std::sync::Arc;
use legend::legend;
use kuatia::saga::*;

// Define a multi-transfer saga
legend! {
    FundAndPay<LedgerCtx, SagaError> {
        deposit: DepositMovementStep,
        pay: PayMovementStep,
    }
}

// Build and run — Ledger uses Arc<dyn Store>, so LedgerCtx is concrete
let ledger: Arc<Ledger> = /* ... */;
let saga = FundAndPay::new(FundAndPayInputs {
    deposit: DepositInput { to: alice, asset: usd, amount, external: bank },
    pay: PayInput { from: alice, to: bob, asset: usd, amount },
});
let ctx = LedgerCtx::new(ledger.clone());
let result = saga.build(ctx).start().await;

match result {
    ExecutionResult::Completed(e) => { /* all steps succeeded */ }
    ExecutionResult::Failed(_, err) => { /* deposit was compensated */ }
    ExecutionResult::Paused(e) => { /* serialize e for crash recovery */ }
    ExecutionResult::CompensationFailed { .. } => { /* manual intervention */ }
}

Since Ledger uses Arc<dyn Store> internally, LedgerCtx is a concrete type — no generic parameters needed. This is what allows legend! to define saga types directly.

The LedgerCtx is serializable — a paused saga can be persisted and resumed later, enabling crash recovery. On boot, load pending sagas and resume them; legend will compensate any completed steps that need rollback.

Reversal

reverse() creates a compensating transfer that consumes the original's created postings and recreates its consumed postings, effectively undoing the operation while preserving the full audit trail.