2017-06-05 12:37:23 +00:00
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States
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======
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.. topic:: Summary
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* *States represent on-ledger facts*
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* *States are evolved by marking the current state as historic and creating an updated state*
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* *Each node has a vault where it stores any relevant states to itself*
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2017-06-07 15:14:01 +00:00
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Video
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-----
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.. raw:: html
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/213812054" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<p></p>
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Overview
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--------
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2017-06-05 12:37:23 +00:00
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A *state* is an immutable object representing a fact known by one or more Corda nodes at a specific point in time.
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States can contain arbitrary data, allowing them to represent facts of any kind (e.g. stocks, bonds, loans, KYC data,
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identity information...).
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For example, the following state represents an IOU - an agreement that Alice owes Bob an amount X:
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.. image:: resources/state.png
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2017-06-07 15:14:01 +00:00
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:scale: 25%
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:align: center
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2017-06-05 12:37:23 +00:00
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Specifically, this state represents an IOU of £10 from Alice to Bob.
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As well as any information about the fact itself, the state also contains a reference to the *contract* that governs
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the evolution of the state over time. We discuss contracts in :doc:`key-concepts-contracts`.
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State sequences
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---------------
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As states are immutable, they cannot be modified directly to reflect a change in the state of the world.
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Instead, the lifecycle of a shared fact over time is represented by a **state sequence**. When a state needs to be
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updated, we create a new version of the state representing the new state of the world, and mark the existing state as
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historic.
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This sequence of state replacements gives us a full view of the evolution of the shared fact over time. We can
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picture this situation as follows:
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.. image:: resources/state-sequence.png
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2017-06-07 15:14:01 +00:00
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:scale: 25%
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:align: center
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2017-06-05 12:37:23 +00:00
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The vault
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---------
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Each node on the network maintains a *vault* - a database where it tracks all the current and historic states that it
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is aware of, and which it considers to be relevant to itself:
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.. image:: resources/vault-simple.png
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2017-06-07 15:14:01 +00:00
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:scale: 25%
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:align: center
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2017-06-05 12:37:23 +00:00
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We can think of the ledger from each node's point of view as the set of all the current (i.e. non-historic) states that
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it is aware of.
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