stblocks

Stblocks, short for state blocks, is a modular, block-based data structure designed to represent and manage state in distributed and streaming systems. A stblock encapsulates a unit of state and can be composed of smaller blocks to form a hierarchical representation. The design emphasizes immutability and deterministic serialization to support replication and auditing.

The term appears in several projects describing similar ideas; while not a formal standard, stblocks are typically described as blocks with an identifier, a type, a payload, metadata, and optional child blocks.

Data model: each block has an id (often a hash), a type, a payload, and metadata such as timestamp and version. Blocks can reference child blocks, forming a DAG. Serialization commonly uses content-addressable formats to enable deduplication and integrity checks.

Core operations include create, compose (attach child blocks), merge, split, and snapshot. Pruning and garbage collection may remove unreferenced blocks under policy.

Common use cases include event sourcing, configuration management, stateful stream processing, distributed caches, and ledger-like systems that require precise history.

Implementation considerations include encoding choices (JSON, CBOR, or binary), compression, encryption, and the cost of maintaining references. Performance depends on block size, depth, and traversal patterns.

Advantages include modularity, fine-grained versioning, and compatibility with content-addressable storage, while limitations include metadata overhead, complexity, and garbage collection challenges in large graphs.

See also: content-addressable storage, event sourcing, Merkle tree, block store.