Snowman is a blockchain-optimized consensus protocol–high-throughput, totally ordered, and great for smart contracts. The Snowman is a totally ordered implementation of the Avalanche consensus protocol. Both the Platform Chain (P-Chain), Contract Chain (C-Chain) implement the Snowman consensus protocol. With the Cortina upgrade, the Exchange Chain (X-Chain) will also use the Snowman consensus.

When you instantiate Avalanche consensus with a VM whose state is a single UTXO and a tx format that only produces a single UTXO you get the Snowman consensus. The "UTXO" is just the "Current State" and the output UTXO is the "New State".

For any additional questions, please view our other knowledge base articles or contact a support team member via the chat button. Examples are for illustrative purposes only.