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Ballet is Firedancer’s foundational library providing high-performance cryptographic primitives, encoding/decoding utilities, and data structures optimized for Solana protocol operations.

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Overview

Ballet implements low-level building blocks used throughout Firedancer, including signature verification, hashing, serialization, and Solana-specific data structures. All implementations are optimized for x86 architectures with AVX/AVX-512 support.
Ballet components are designed to be platform-aware, automatically selecting the best implementation based on available CPU features (AVX-512, AVX, or fallback).

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Core Modules

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Signature Schemes

Ed25519 (ed25519/fd_ed25519.h)
  • ED25519 signature generation and verification
  • Optimized signature batch verification
  • Public key derivation from private keys
  • Error codes: FD_ED25519_SUCCESS, FD_ED25519_ERR_SIG, FD_ED25519_ERR_PUBKEY, FD_ED25519_ERR_MSG
Secp256k1 (secp256k1/)
  • ECDSA signature operations
  • Used for Ethereum compatibility
Secp256r1 (secp256r1/)
  • NIST P-256 curve operations
  • Used for secure enclave integration
BLS12-381 (bls/fd_bls12_381.h)
  • BLS signature aggregation
  • Pairing-based cryptography

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Hash Functions

SHA-256 (sha256/fd_sha256.h)
  • Standard SHA-256 hashing
  • Block size: 64 bytes, Hash size: 32 bytes
  • Constants: FD_SHA256_HASH_SZ, FD_SHA256_BLOCK_SZ
SHA-512 (sha512/fd_sha512.h)
  • SHA-512 hashing
  • Used in Ed25519 operations
Blake3 (blake3/fd_blake3.h)
  • BLAKE3 cryptographic hash function
  • High-performance parallel hashing
Keccak-256 (keccak256/)
  • Ethereum-compatible Keccak hashing
  • Used for EVM integration

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Text Encoding

Base58 (base58/fd_base58.h)
  • Solana address encoding/decoding
  • Optimized with AVX instructions
  • Standard for Solana public key representation
Base64 (base64/fd_base64.h)
  • Standard Base64 encoding/decoding
  • Used for RPC responses
Hex (hex/)
  • Hexadecimal encoding utilities

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Binary Formats

Protocol Buffers (pb/, nanopb/)
  • Protobuf serialization
  • Nanopb integration for compact encoding
TOML (toml/)
  • Configuration file parsing
JSON (json/)
  • JSON parsing and generation

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Transaction Components

Transaction (txn/)
  • Transaction parsing and validation
  • Signature verification
  • Account metadata extraction
Shred (shred/fd_shred.h)
  • Shred encoding/decoding
  • FEC (Forward Error Correction) operations
  • Merkle tree validation
Microblock (block/fd_microblock.h)
  • Block data structure handling
  • Microblock operations for consensus

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Proof of History

PoH (poh/)
  • Proof of History hash chain operations
  • SHA-256 based sequential hashing

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Zero-Knowledge Proofs

ZK-SDK (zksdk/)
  • Zero-knowledge proof primitives
  • Used for confidential transfers
  • Range proofs and sigma protocols

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Elliptic Curves

BN254 (bn254/fd_bn254.h)
  • Barreto-Naehrig curve operations
  • Scalar field arithmetic
  • Poseidon hash function (fd_poseidon.h)
  • GLV endomorphism optimization
Fiat-Crypto (fiat-crypto/)
  • Formally verified cryptographic primitives
  • Generated from Coq proofs

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Data Structures

Binary Merkle Tree (bmtree/fd_bmtree.h)
  • Efficient Merkle tree operations
  • Used for shred verification
Reed-Solomon (reedsol/)
  • Forward error correction encoding
  • Used for shred redundancy

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Hashing & Checksums

SipHash-1-3 (siphash13/)
  • Fast keyed hash function
  • Used for hash tables
MurmurHash3 (murmur3/)
  • Non-cryptographic hash function
  • Fast hash table operations
LtHash (lthash/)
  • Lattice-based homomorphic hashing

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Encryption

AES (aes/fd_aes_gcm.h)
  • AES-GCM authenticated encryption
  • Hardware-accelerated (AES-NI)
ChaCha20 (chacha/fd_chacha.h)
  • ChaCha20 stream cipher
  • ChaCha20-RNG for random number generation

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Other

Weighted Sampling (wsample/)
  • Weighted random sampling algorithms
  • Used for leader schedule computation
UTF-8 (utf8/)
  • UTF-8 validation and processing
X.509 (x509/)
  • Certificate parsing and validation
Zstd (zstd/)
  • Zstandard compression
Bzip2 (bzip2/)
  • Bzip2 compression support
ELF (elf/)
  • ELF binary parsing
  • Used for eBPF program loading
sBPF (sbpf/)
  • Solana BPF program support
  • VM bytecode operations

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Configuration

// Ballet automatically selects optimal implementations
#if FD_HAS_AVX512
#define FD_ALIGN (64UL)
#elif FD_HAS_AVX
#define FD_ALIGN (32UL)
#elif FD_HAS_INT128
#define FD_ALIGN (16UL)
#else
#define FD_ALIGN (8UL)
#endif

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Key Constants

ConstantValueDescription
FD_TPU_MTU1232 bytesMaximum Solana transaction size
FD_ALIGN8-64 bytesPlatform-dependent alignment
FD_ED25519_SIG_SZ64 bytesEd25519 signature size
FD_SHA256_HASH_SZ32 bytesSHA-256 hash output size
FD_BASE58_ENCODED_32_SZ44 bytesMax base58 encoded address length

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Usage Example

#include "ballet/ed25519/fd_ed25519.h"

// Sign a message
uchar sig[64];
uchar msg[] = "Hello Solana";
uchar public_key[32];
uchar private_key[32];
fd_sha512_t sha;

fd_ed25519_sign(sig, msg, sizeof(msg),
                public_key, private_key, &sha);

// Verify signature
int result = fd_ed25519_verify(msg, sizeof(msg),
                                sig, public_key, &sha);
if (result == FD_ED25519_SUCCESS) {
  // Signature is valid
}

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Performance Characteristics

  • Ed25519 Batch Verification: Up to 8x faster than individual verification
  • SHA-256: Hardware-accelerated on x86 with SHA extensions
  • Base58: AVX-optimized encoding/decoding
  • AES-GCM: AES-NI accelerated encryption
  • All algorithms: Cache-line aware, minimize false sharing

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Header Files

#include "ballet/fd_ballet.h"      // Main header
#include "ballet/fd_ballet_base.h" // Base utilities
  • Flamenco - Uses Ballet for transaction processing
  • Disco - Uses Ballet for signature verification in tiles
  • Tango - Transport layer for Ballet operations

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