Invariant Subsystem — Technical Summary

Overview

The invariant subsystem provides a runtime correctness-checking framework for stellar-core. It defines a registry of invariant checks that are executed at key lifecycle events (operation apply, ledger commit, bucket apply, assume-state, and periodic background snapshots). When an invariant is violated, it either throws InvariantDoesNotHold (for strict invariants) or logs an error (for non-strict ones). Invariants are registered at application startup and enabled via configuration patterns (regex matching on invariant names).

Key Files