Layer 2 Solutions: Taking Scalability to New Heights

In this article we will explore the concept behind Layer 2 Solutions and the problems they are solving in blockchain.

Introduction

According to the CAP theorem (also known as Brewer's theorem) first proposed in 1998 by Eric Brewer before Seth Gilbert and Nancy Lynch propounded it in 2002, a distributed system cannot attain consistency, availability, and partition tolerance simultaneously. This same opinion holds sway among blockchain experts for blockchain protocols. The belief often referred to as blockchain trilemma suggests that blockchain cannot achieve three of its core principles: security, scalability, and decentralization simultaneously.

By implication, the blockchain trilemma said, a protocol can achieve decentralization and security while sacrificing scalability and vice versa. The blockchain trilemma provided an answer to why centralized networks can boast thousands of transactions per second and the blockchain networks like bitcoin and Ethereum can only afford a few tens of transactions per second. In that light, the trading system sacrifices decentralization while achieving high throughput, secure and scalable network. To scale up blockchain protocols, developers began looking to salvage the situation.

So far, to solve the trilemma belief, several approaches are taken. The proposed solutions to achieving scalability are Layer 2 and Layer 1 solutions respectively.

Layer-1 and Layer-2 Solutions

Although this article focuses on Layer 2 solutions, it will be necessary to lay a background that includes Layer 1 solutions. It will highlight several Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions as well as references to top Layer 2 implementations you should know about.

Layer-1 Solutions

Often referred to as on-chain solutions, Layer-1 solutions are the scalability solutions that require redesigning the underlying protocols of the base protocol. Look at the Layer-1 solution as say, redesigning Ethereum or Bitcoin protocols to increase throughput and reduce fees. For instance, Visa, MasterCard, and other payment processors process an average transaction per second of 5000 while Bitcoin and Ethereum process 4 and 15, respectively. Going by the current design of these blockchain networks, as users of the networks grow, the TPS will keep reducing and transactions keep getting unnecessarily slow, hence, the need for a redesign. The Layer-1 solution entails redesigning the underlying protocols of the networks to allow for throughput, energy efficiency, and cheaper transaction fees.

There are thus several methodologies employed to redesign the base protocols. Although some of them are still at their experimental stage, they include:

Consensus-Based Protocol Redesign

This consists of redesigning the consensus protocol of the base protocol to scale transactions and efficiency. The leading blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum have leveraged PoW consensus that allows miners to solve cryptographic puzzles to validate and verify blocks thereby making it energy-demanding and tedious. Nonetheless, PoW systems are secured but often characterized by high transaction fees and low throughput when there is network congestion. To mitigate this risk and achieve a scalable network, PoS consensus becomes a good choice. Instead of miners solving cryptographic puzzles using enormous energy, users stake coins on the blockchain.

PoS consensus is set to cut down the high cost of transaction and throughput of the PoW networks. It is yet in its experimental stage, but some protocols are already developing on it. Among the top projects are Solana, Avalanche, and Ethereum. Ethereum termed its proposed PoS version Ethereum 2.0. From a frontier phase, Ethereum will be going full serenity next year by launching a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. Unlike the high cost of transaction and low TPS of Ethereum 1.0, Ethereum 2.0 is expected to dramatically and fundamentally increase the capacity of the Ethereum network while increasing decentralization and preserving network security.

Sharding

Also in an experimental stage, sharding is adapted from distributed databases as one of the Layer-1 scaling solutions. Employing a Sharding Layer-1 scaling solution means breaking the state of the base protocol into distinct datasets called "shards". Here, tasks are managed by shards, simultaneously processed in parallel and they collectively maintain the entire network.

Each node in a network represents a shard instead of maintaining a copy of the entire main chain to allow scalability. Each shard across the network provides proofs to the mainchain and interacts with one another to share addresses, balances, and general states using cross-shard communication protocols. Although in an experimental stage, awaiting its launch in 2022, Ethereum 2.0 is exploring the implementations of shards.

Layer-2 Solutions

Instead of implementing the changes of the parent protocols of the blockchain, Layer-2 solutions took scalability to a whole new height. Layer-2 solutions are those scalability solutions that entail adding a layer to the base protocol to increase throughput. They take transactions off the main chain, hence, are called off-chain solutions.

The off-chain solution doesn't allow base protocol structural changes since the second layer is added as an extra layer. For that reason, Layer-2 scaling solutions have the potential to achieve high throughput without sacrificing network security.

Layer-2 solutions consist of smart contracts built on top of the main blockchain. Those secondary layers are for scaling payments and off-chain computation. Layer-2 solutions can be achieved in various ways. For example;

Rollups

Rollups are one of the Layer-2 scaling solutions built on the Ethereum blockchain. Unlike the Layer-1 solutions, they are secondary layers that allow users to perform transactions off the main Ethereum chain (Layer-1). It is designed to post transactional data on Layer-1 thereafter, hence, inheriting the security of the base protocol. Rollups possess the following properties:

Executes transaction outside Layer-1.
Proofs transactions on Layer-1, thereby improving the security of Layer-2.
Using the transactional data on Layer-1, rollup smart contract in Layer 2 enforces correct transaction execution on it.
Operators stake a bond on the Rollups smart contract which they get incentivized to verify and execute transactions correctly.

Rollups can either be zero-knowledge or optimistic Rollups. They both differ in their security model:

Optimistic Rollups

Optimistic rollups is a Layer 2 solution designed to enable autonomous smart contracts using the Optimistic Virtual Machine. By default it doesn't perform any computation, hence, can offer up to 10-100x improvements in scalability depending on the transaction. It sits parallel to the main Ethereum chain on Layer-2. Transactions on Optimistic rollups are written on the main Ethereum chain in form of call data thereby further reducing the gas cost.

As stated ab initio, Optimistic rollups do compute transactions outside of the main layer in the form of batches and submit only the root hash of the block to the main chain. Hence, the need for a mechanism (fraud proofs) to ensure transactions are legitimate That way, when someone notices a fraudulent transaction, the rollups initiate fraud proofs before running a transactional computation using available state data. By implication, Optimistic rollups take significantly longer to confirm transactions than zero knowledge rollups.

There are currently multiple implementations of Optimistic rollups that you can integrate into your dApps. They include; Optimism, Off-chain Labs Arbitrum Rollup, Fuel Network, Cartesi, OMGX

Zero-Knowledge Rollups

This is a type of rollup on the ethereum blockchain. It bundles hundreds of transactions off-chain and generates a cryptographic proof known as Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (SNARK), often called validity proof.

The ZK-rollup smart contract maintains and updates the state of all transfers on Layer 2 with validity proof. Instead of the entire transactional data, the ZK Rollups needs only the validity proof, which goes on to simplify transactions on the network. Validating a block is quicker and cheaper in ZK Rollups because less data is included.

There are multiple implementations of ZK-rollups that you can integrate into your dApps. They include; Loopring, Starkware, Matter Labs zkSync, zkTube, Aztec 2.0, and so on.

Channels

A State Channel is a Layer-2 scaling solution that facilitates two-way communication between the participants which will allow them to perform transactions off the main blockchain. Typically, for a recurring payment State Channel does not require a recurring validation by nodes of the Layer-1 network to improve overall transaction capacity and speed. The underlying blockchain is sealed off via a set of smart contracts or multi-signature seals off. Leveraging the smart contract pre-defined by participants, they can directly interact with each other without the need of the miners. Upon the completion of the transaction or batch of transactions on a state channel, the final “state” of the “channel” and all its inherent transitions are recorded to the underlying blockchain. Some projects including Liquid Network, Celer, Bitcoin Lightning, and Ethereum's Raiden Network are currently deploying state channels scaling solutions.

Sidechain

A Sidechain is a secondary blockchain linked to the main blockchain via a two-way peg. Like most layer 2 scaling solutions, it uses an independent consensus and contracts to optimize throughput. On the sidechain, the main chain takes up security roles, confirming batched transaction records and resolving disputes.

They are somewhat similar to channels, however, it differs in how they process transactions and the security impacts. Transactions are recorded publicly on the ledger, unlike the private records of the channels. Sidechains enable tokens and other digital assets to move back and forth freely from the main chain. When the sidechain completes a transaction, a confirmation is relayed across the chains, followed by a waiting period for added security. Due to their allowance to move assets around freely on the new network, a user who wants to send the coins/assets back to the main chain can do that by simply reversing the process.

Plasma

Plasma is a secondary chain on the Ethereum blockchain, proposed by Joseph Poon and Vitalik Buterin in their paper Plasma: Scalable Autonomous Smart Contracts. It comprises Merkel trees and smart contracts which create unlimited smaller versions of the main chain (Ethereum), called child chains. Integrating these child chains enables fast and cheap transactions off the main Ethereum blockchain into child chains.

Users can deposit and withdraw plasma chain funds, enabled by fraud proofs. For such a transaction to go on, there has to be communication between the child chains and the root chain, secured by the fraud proofs. Users deposit by sending the asset on the smart contract, managed by the plasma chain. Then the plasma chain proceeds to assign a unique ID to the deposited assets while the operator generates a batch of plasma transactions received off-chain at intervals. On the other hand, the contract initiates a challenging period during which anyone can use the Merkle branches to invalidate withdrawals if they can.

Conclusion

Like the CAP theorem in distributed systems, the blockchain trilemma suggests that blockchain cannot achieve scalability, security, and decentralization simultaneously. However, the Layer-2 scaling solutions have come to challenge the thought system. It allows the mainchain to take care of security while maintaining scalable networks in its additional layers.

Also Read Arbitrum: Scaling without Compromise

Serum: A Blend of Speed, Convenience and Trustlessness

As the next-generation exchange system, Serum is making waves in proving its credibility in crypto-trading and decentralized finance transactions. It provides faster and frictionless orders with its automated order book system.

Serum provides incentives to its users which in turn favors so many developers. Some of these incentives are Serum Token (SRM) and MegaSerum Tokens(MSRM). With these tokens, one can achieve passive crypto income by staking their tokens on Serum.

Serum allows every member to stake their tokens. It doesn't only allow members with the highest token to stake, it also allows members with small tokens to stake too.

Seeing that Serum DEX has so much to offer, there's a need to know so much about it. In this article, we'll extensively discuss Serum DEX and its features. Also, we'll discuss the values and how it relates to other blockchains. Enjoy!

What is Serum?

The Serum is a decentralized exchange system built on the Solana ecosystem to provide unmatched low costs and speedy DeFi transactions. It charges as low as 0.0001 cents for transactions.

The system aims to offer users faster settlement times and zero centralization.

In offering a non-centralized side of its architecture, it centralizes price fees even without using Oracles services. Hence, we say the Serum system functions without Oracles. Oracle is a centralized service used by Defi protocols to verify, authenticate and query external data then send them to an already closed system.

Because Serum is based on the Solana blockchain, it offers fully decentralized services that are easy, fast, and affordable to use.

In Serum DEX, users can easily transfer assets amongst different blockchains and even trade stable coins and wrapped coins or even convert coins from one coin to another. For instance, converting Ethereum to FxT. Some of the projects build on Serum DEX are:

Furthermore, users can create customized financial products as they deem fit.

The Serum uses native Serum tokens(SRM) as its main governing assets and incentive for its ecosystem. With SRM, users can stake, trade, or participate in burn and buy fee incentives for reduced trading costs.

Also, with the SRM, users enjoy a further reduction in Serum-based transactions.

Aside from all of these, Serum aims to enhance frictionless cross-chain contracts in DeFi while traders trade synthetic assets. It provides many synergies with the Solana blockchain serving as its host application.

Solana Blockchain

As the fast-growing blockchain system, Solana has secured a spot in the top 10 cryptocurrency projects according to the market cap. Being able to carry out fifty thousand transactions in a second(TPS), Solana blockchain has demonstrated to be the quickest blockchain anywhere on the globe. So, Serum building their project on the Solana network will allow for quick fast transactions on the Serum network.

Solana, with all of its functions, is a layer-1 blockchain. So, to function effectively, Serum functions solely on a layer-1 solution system without layer-2 solutions. It operates solely on a decentralized clock that monitors time-stamps transactions together with an advanced Proof-of-Stake(POS) mechanism.

In recent times, blockchain developers have been designing decentralized applications using the Solana blockchain. This widely accepted choice from blockchain developers is due to Solana's reputation in providing fast and scalable smart-contract-enabled blockchain. It's this advanced blockchain system that the Serum network is built on. Clearly, Serum is just a project on the Solana ecosystem.

That said, Serum DEX mirrors the cost and speed of the Solana network. With this, it offers a fully decentralized trading arena with easy trading on centralized exchange systems. It also offers inter-operable features that allow users to exchange assets such as Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoins (BTC), SPL-based tokens, and ERC-based Tokens.

Serum Token (SRM)

A unique thing about the Serum token (SRM) is its means of collecting values. It accrues values via hyperinflation.

SRM accrues values through adoption and utility. Some are:

All Serum's net fees go to burn.
50% off on all Serum fees on holding a token.
Fees payment with SRM.

That said, most SRM have extensive unlocking terms with all sales fees inclusive. Serum achieves this by locking the tokens. SRM are locked cryptographically in a smart contract. It takes about a year or less to unlock a locked token.

The period where you cannot unlock a locked token is its unlocking period. Most SRM have an unlocking period of one year.

In some cases, some SRM take up to 6 years to unlock. This type equates to 1/2190 SRM in a day.

SRM amount to a maximum of 10 Million tokens, creating about 175 million tokens in its circulation. Because of this high number of tokens in circulation, Serum has been able to provide liquidity to their project. However, several token stakeholders have decided to hold on to a large number of their tokens thereby reducing the number of tokens in circulation.

Moving on, several traders stake SRM to achieve passive crypto income. They also do this by rescuing fees and staking rewards when trading on Serum DEX.

Howbeit, traders with SRM can still partake in on-chain governance. Traders who do this will vote on updates to specific markets on the project.

MegaSerum Tokens (MSRM)

A MegaSerum(MSRM) is equivalent to one million SRM. It means you have to have a million SRM as they'll amount to one MSRM.

MegaSerums are rare and there are only 10%. This is so as there are just fewer users that show belief and commitment to the Serum network. It's just those 10% that can lock their SRM with MSRM.

Project Serum Cryptocurrency Ecosystem

The project Serum, built on the Solana ecosystem, provides usable services to developers and other users from the start of their project to its deployment. On a large scale, this ecosystem provides a suitable platform for non-technical users planning on delving into Decentralized Finance(Defi). This they can do on Serum's user-friendly App(dApp).

That said, in the Serum ecosystem, developers are automatically eligible for grants once they build on this network. With this, projects receive the support and funding to enhance their user adoption and brand awareness.

A good example of a project like this is the Phantom project. The Phantom project is a Defi(Decentralized finance) and NFT crypto wallet. Another example is Coin98 that offers users smooth running payment gateway services.

Also, Project Serum provides developers contact points and resources. With that, you can view on-chain codes, clients codes, and repositories. The project also offers tutorials for developers which can be found on the "Developer Resources" on its website.

Finally, the Project Serum allows users to comprehensively overview all Serum's tokens and integration within its ecosystem. And to top it all, the project provides a link to its whitepaper.

Serum and Staking Nodes

Before one becomes a Serum node, one must take at least 10million SRM including a minimum of 1 MSRM. However, at 100 million SRM or 100 MSRM tokens, nodes stop staking tokens.

Nodes collect several rewards based on their network participation, the aggregate of activity, and performance within the Serum ecosystem. Generally, nodes are in charge of some blockchain operations like cross-chain settlement validation.

Staking

Oftentimes, traders can't continue the Serum project and earn passive income via Defi because they can't stake 10 million Serum tokens. This shouldn't be a challenge as there are alternatives to this.

Serum token holders can now stake tokens as regards a node. A node is formed by a leader and consists of members of that network. The node leader doesn't necessarily have the highest tokens. But the leader can be the founder of the node and will receive small fractions of node staking fees.

In a node, anyone or the leader can stake a node on behalf of another member. Still, Serum nodes will offer trading fees and governance rights within its ecosystem.

However, there're mechanisms to provide an overload of tokens in the ecosystem. As many readers stake their SRM tokens, the system cools down following unstacking tokens. This period, known for just a week.

Node Rewards

In a node, rewards are distributed through native SRM. However, the nodal leaders receive more proportion of the node than other members. Commonly, the leader receives 15% of the rewards while the 85% is distributed among other members.

Annually, nodes receive a 2% percentage yield (APY) based on their staked funds. However, this percentage can increase to around 13%. This can only be possible if members of a node increase their performance duties and challenges. Also, nodes get special rewards for special challenges. One of these challenges includes providing collateral for SRM tokens. The aim of this is to prevent funds from burning.

How to Use Serum

Serum exchange doesn't require that users own an account before a transaction. All you need to transact on Serum DEX is an internet connection, a wallet, and some cryptocurrencies.

First, if you're carrying out a transaction on Serum, you’ll be needing a Solana wallet. Asides from the Solana wallet, there are other wallets that Serum interacts with.

Some are:

To switch between the wallet, click on the change wallet at the top right corner of the interface. Then pick your desired wallet.

Here is a breakdown of how to use the Serum before we delve into each process extensively.

Create a Solana wallet

Here is a link that explains how to create a Solana wallet.

After creating a Solana wallet, on the first opening, you’ll be asked to write down your recovery keys. Make sure to write them somewhere first as you’ll be needing them some other time.

Often, we advise users to create a password immediately after creating their Solana wallet.

After creating a password, you’ll be asked to re-enter your new password for confirmation.

After doing this, you click on continue. There you have it. You have just created your Solana wallet.

On your Solana wallet, you can deposit Eth and convert it to Sol and vice versa. As you’ll expect, there are conversion fees associated with this.

From another exchange system, you can click on the cryptocurrencies you have there and transfer them to your Solana wallet. In withdrawing your cryptocurrencies, you’ll be needing your already copied Solana wallet link to be able to receive your money.

To successfully withdraw, you will need to authenticate your transactions.

After a complete authentication, you can head to your Solana wallet. It’s critical to mention that this transaction doesn’t take long. It only takes a maximum of two minutes to complete a transaction.

Seeing that your cryptocurrency has arrived in your Solana wallet, you can add tokens by clicking on the add token feature on the interface. One may choose to add Serum unwrapped Bitcoin to the Sol.

These wrapped tokens can then be in the deposit and become real underlying assets.

Also important to note is the small fee attached to adding tokens to a Solana wallet.

The next thing to do is to find a Serum-based DEX to connect to this wallet.

Connecting your Wallet to Serum DEX

Connecting your wallet to Serum DEX shouldn’t be challenging provided you follow these easy steps. Below are simple steps on wallet connection.

On the Serum DEX interface, click on "connect" on the top right corner of the interface.

Ensure you must have selected your desired wallet before clicking connect.

And if you wish to change your wallet, you must disconnect from the current wallet, then, you can click the select wallet feature to pick your new wallet.

The Value of Serum

As of the time of writing this article, Serum values was the 11th most trending cryptocurrency. On the other hand, it was 141st on the coin market cap on that same day.

On the coin market, Serum was $8.10, a market price of $404.8 million, and a 24-hour value of $117.71 million.

To Wrap It Up

Serum DEX offers a platform for developers and other users to trade speedily and conveniently. For developers, it provides contact points and resources. Such that, they can view on-chain codes and attend tutorials. All that Serum offers is because of its conjunction with the Solana network.

Also Read Solana: Exploring the Blockchain

Arbitrum: Scaling without Compromise

A new technology of blockchain, serving and acting as an optimistic roll-up called Arbitrum, just surfaced in the cryptocurrency world. This system allows Ethereum holders, users, protocols, and participants to participate and settle all transactions on the Ethereum mainnet. This serves as linkup loops to the main Ethereum crypto body.

Arbitrum, therefore, serves as a Layer 2 cryptocurrency platform. By implication, the security and protection of the Arbitrum interface and network come from Ethereum itself.

Generally, this makes the transactions scalable, faster, and interoperable, enabling compatibility and bonding of the Ethereum based applications with the Ethereum Cryptocurrency market.

What is Arbitrum

Arbitrum, based on development, has passed and served as a system that ensured efficiency in the management and marketing of Ethereum amongst other layer 2 solutions. It is achieving several goals through the combination of Virtual machine crypto-architecture, networking design, and incentives.

It has 4 significant benefits. They include;

Scalability

During the regular operation of Arbitrum, decentralized apps (DApps) using Arbitrum only have to navigate the main startup catalog or a chain of startups when they make transactions outside of Arbitrum. This allows ease of expansion and upgrades based on the general demand of the server network, unlike other blockchains.

Generally, this is an advantage of enabling easy transmission of information from the user network to the server's network. It further lengthens the time and duration of the transactions without issues of connection or 'interface error'. This might arise due to an increase in the level of traffic on the Ethereum mainnet within or beyond the proxy counts.

Privacy

Only the validated participants can be granted an entry and exit on the DApps, and only such participants need to know what is in the DApps code and storage margin.

This system of upgrade to Arbitrum has enabled a user-network secure network, and all that is being published within this cryptocurrency margin are recognition of the DApps state. The users enabled sector such that messaging, recordings, messages, and currencies have end-to-end encryption between the network and the user's interface.

The DApps creator also has free will to allow the user to see the internal server information. This is based strictly on the user demand, and the Arbitrum network verifying information and disclosure is purely optional.

Trust Guarantee

Arbitrum is unlike many other cryptocurrency channels for trading, storage, and transaction of coins such as state channel, sidechain, blockchain, main wallet, or private chain solution. It guarantees an exact, precise, and accurate execution as long as the validator of a DApp, which is usually the user acts honestly.

No system upgrade allows liquidation of funds or turndown in the rate of transactions and amount of transactions made using Arbitrum.

Interoperability With Ethereum

Arbitrum is an interoperable and interchangeable system that allows the open-source Arbitrum compiler to generate Arbitrum-ready code. You can also transfer Ether or any other Ethereum based token back and forth within the Ethereum and Arbitrum network.

Interoperation scaling is enabled as the Ethereum system now runs as a significant interface in the Ethereum network system. This gives an overall boost to the Ethereum mainnet. Consequently, it reduces the cost of operation and gas fee that comes with the rush in the Ethereum mainnet by network users.

Arbitrum Deployment on Ethereum

Arbitrum platform is technically designed and centralized, making it better and more reliable than most blockchains. Proof of work platform by leveraging on general accessibility to the public and a lower costs of user-network leverage, this innovation of Arbitrum supports standard EVM contract deployment allowing standard Solidity smart contracts to be deployed on Arbitrum Chains using existing developer tools; an entire interface network of cryptocurrencies and tokens could be deployed but this deployment tool is set on the Arbitrum roll-up only and not the Ethereum.

Arbitrum uses roll-ups (a setup tool) to record batches of transactions on the Ethereum mainstream. The chain and execution of these transactions are on a scalable sidechain, while leverage is placed on the Ethereum network for security and result.

The major reason for Ethereum deployment on Arbitrum is to achieve better throughput and make transactions on the ethereum blockchain cost-efficient.

This led to the advanced improvement of Ethereum by the community to make it more scalable and deployed on other scaling-solution channels like Arbitrum.

Arbitrum enhancement in Crypto-market

In recent times, cryptocurrencies have gained popularity in the world's exchange market. Unlike the stock exchange market, the crypto market is almost entirely online, and coins, tokens, and artifacts are being traded by various merchants worldwide. However, Arbitrum has solved significant problems in some of this retrospect. Insecurity and lack of fast servers have posed disturbance in the trading and merchanting of cryptocurrency for years till today. This is one of the many problems the Arbitrum helps in the general overview and boost of the system.

Arbitrum is faster gaining popularity as it now scales 80% of all hurdles posed on using the Ethereum mainnet. This has not only given Ethereum the boost in its exchange as a cryptocurrency but has also helped to increase the general value of the Ethereum coin.

Infrastructure

So, many discussions have been done on the centralization and tactical approach of the Arbitrum network in helping to scale Ethereum during an increase in the demand for Ethereum on the main site leading to various cases such as an increase in gas fee and a slower network; however certain infrastructure has been put in place to allow transactions on the Arbitrum Scaling Solution, this infrastructure is basically by the creation of Arbitrum Virtual Machines (VMs).

The Arbitrum Virtual Machines are first-class actors that perform specific functions logged into the Ethereum network, this form a send-receive network which helps to send and receive funds and messages as well as perform calculations and store data offline according to the code program on the network, generally this is a mechanism that helps reduce gas fee either during an increase in traffic on the Ethereum site or a crashing of the site.

This infrastructure has made the Arbitrum VMs more scalable and private than the conventional way of implementing smart contracts on other scaling solutions such as Polygon and Optimism.

Arbitrum manages the VMs off-grid the mainnet with minimal activity online to ensure correct execution. When someone creates an Arbitrum VM, they select a set of operatives responsible for executing the VM. The set of operatives are called Managers. They are responsible for the execution of the VM. Arbitrum thereby guarantees the correct and exact execution [even if other selected managers are corrupt]; because of the low on-chain work, Arbitrum VM is made more private.

Comparison between Arbitrum and Other Layer 2 Solutions

Arbitrum has posed many advantages to cryptocurrencies, many of these advantages are listed below;

Unlike Plasma, Arbitrum supports arbitrary smart contracts and doesn't require long waiting periods for sending and receiving funds with external contracts.
Unlike State Channels, Arbitrum allows non-unanimous progress and doesn't force large amounts of contract code to be executed on-chain in the case of disputes.
Unlike TrueBit, Arbitrum VMs are stateful smart contracts as opposed to stateless oracles. Furthermore, Arbitrum execution costs are constant rather than metered and independent of storage and code. Finally, Arbitrum does not require a contract code to be public.
Unlike Polygon, Arbitrum channels are open and discrete, making it a basic and more private layer 2 option, especially by the mechanism of enhancement implemented and accomplished by the Arbitrum VMs.

To Wrap It Up

Arbitrum has, over some time, gained publicity as a network operative system of Ethereum, leveraging over several system setups that have placed it above many layer 2 solutions and serving as an alternative route during network effect on the Ethereum mainnet.

Arbitrum is not just a solution to the problems posed by the Ethereum mainnet. It is a scaling option that has diverted and enhanced the usage and navigation of Ethereum, geometrically boosting the system by almost 100% and enabling many onsite users of the Ethereum.

Cryptocurrency traders and merchants are advised to engage in the Arbitrum network as more than an alternative but a new phase of Ethereum.

Also read Casper: The Future-Proof Blockchain

Casper: The Future-Proof Blockchain

The Casper Network is a layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain that improves how businesses upgrade new services and products on the blockchain. Unlike other networks, it has peculiar features that make it unique. It's for these features that the Casper Network is becoming the best choice for programming and blockchain transmission.

One of these unique features includes its Highway protocol consensus. It's with this Highway protocol consensus that Casper blockchains can finalize the addition of new blocks to the chain. Aside from this, there are other unique features of the Casper Network.

In this article, we extensively discuss the unique features of the Casper Network and how they aid blockchain transmission. Enjoy!

Casper Network: History, Protocol and CSPR Token

The Casper Network is a permissionless blockchain network supported by the PoS consensus algorithm and WebAssembly (WASM). It was created to solve global blockchain challenges by effectively solving a trilemma:

Scalability
Provision of e enterprise-level security
Decentralization on a blockchain protocol

Before we fully delve into the benefits, here is a brief on how the Casper Network came into existence and its operations.

The History of Casper Network

In 2018, two people founded the Casper Network - Mrinal Manohar and Medha Parlikar. In its creation, the creators aimed to create a network that promotes DApps, blockchain technology, and smart contracts globally. Hence, based on the Casper CBC specification, they created the first real-time Proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.

Casper as a platform aims to continuously adapt to the needs of its users and developers from different spheres. Because of this, it is regarded as the gateway to a developed era for Web3 to match the increasing demand for connected services globally.

Highway Protocol

The Highway protocol is a consensus protocol created with the Casper Network to attain a very high threshold required for finalizing blocks to be added to a blockchain. In essence, it enables quick agreement among validates for block addition on the Casper Network.

The Highway protocol is peculiar to the Casper Network giving it an edge over other networks. Asides from enabling quick agreement among validators, the Highway protocol allows for flexibility during the finalization of blocks.

CSPR Token

After completing on-chain transactions on Casper Network through Casper PoS consensus, network validators are rewarded with native cryptocurrencies. This reward is peculiar to the Casper Network system and is known as the CSPR token.

It was first introduced through the Coin list in a public sale. In the first supply, about 800million tokens were supplied but this was followed by a slight decrease in demand afterward. Although CSPR tokens were first sold on the Coin list, they're currently available on several crypto exchange platforms.

Clean Energy Blockchain

According to research by the University of Cambridge, the bitcoin global consumption index is 0.6%. This is very high relative to other systems. In fact, Elon Musk announced a few months ago that it'll no longer accept bitcoin as a payment option.

The reason for this high energy to power blockchains is due to the validation, computing, and securing activities of the blockchain network system. To solve this, the Casper blockchain has already incorporated a PoS, and a Highway protocol.

Unlike other platforms, the Casper blockchain network provides an environmentally-friendly blockchain network. Clearly, Casper produces clean energy blockchains.

Having known much about Casper Network, you must understand the benefits of this system. Below, we extensively discuss the benefits of the Casper Network.

The Benefits of the Casper Network

As a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain system, Casper Network makes it easy to add new blocks. This especially is a major difficulty that other systems haven't been able to solve. Asides from this, there are other advantages of the Casper Network.

Developer-Friendly Features

Commonly, developers use block-chain programming languages for their services. A typical example of a blockchain programming language is Solidity. Solidity makes it easier for developers to code for different locks.

Unlike Solidity, the Casper Network has an advanced programming language known as WebAssemly(WASM) and Rust. Both of these programming languages make coding easy for developers. With the Rust and WebAssemly(WASM), businesses can efficiently future-proof their organizations.

Now, here is some good news, Casper has a transpiler that converts solidity codes into Rust. This tool, known as Caspiler, helps developers convert decentralized applications such as Ethereum onto the Casper Network.

Upgradeable Smart Contracts

The Casper Network has a very distinct characteristic that supports the upgrade of smart contacts already on the on-chain. In fact, the smart contract rate on Casper is less costly and less complex than with other platforms.

Besides this, during upgrades, the Casper system checks for vulnerabilities too. With this, smart contracts cannot be edited by anyone, not even by the original developers once deployed. With upgradeability, businesses can now offer resilient and adaptable block-chain products and services.

Lower Gas Costs

Another very intriguing benefit of the Casper Network is its capacity to moderate gas costs. During large volume transactions, gas volumes can get high and customers can get services at ridiculously high prices. But with the Casper Network, we reduce network congestion when competing with other Layer 1 blockchain projects.

Caper even has a future gas costs plan to help businesses prepare for the future. They hope to develop a predictive gas future to allow businesses to save gas ahead of time. With this, businesses better plan for the future.

Weighted Keys

Often, blockchains come with binary(on and off) smart contracts which is a disadvantage for large teams. Large teams manage complex systems and applications which the binary smart contract cannot accommodate. This becomes a challenge for large teams as they cannot effectively work together and manage these complex systems.

To properly manage complex systems, the Casper Network has weighted keys that allow for multi-level system access permission. These weighted keys organize the security and quantity of businesses' assets. All of these above are the advantages of the Casper Network.

Casper's New Solution for Defi

Seeing the rapid changes that are occurring to the digital world and the cryptocurrency world, it's critical that their systems adapt to these changes too. One of these facets is the Defi system. Meanwhile, Casper is leading in the Defi revolution quite well.

Unlike other blockchains, the Casper Network doesn't contain high security, energy, and decentralization costs. From this, it's clear the Casper Network is leading in the Defi revolution.

Flexible Protocol

Casper Network incorporates a new consensus protocol known as the Highway protocol. The highway protocol allows the easy finalization of additional blocks to be added to the blockchain. To do this, the highway protocol presents varying thresholds for finalization.

Energy Efficient and High Finality Defi

Unlike other blockchains that depend heavily on miners to achieve a consensus, the Casper Network introduces validators to achieve consensus. And Casper can only achieve this through its advanced PoS protocol.

Deterministic Protocol

A major pitfall in Defi is its probabilistic network fees. Several people say the EIP 1559 makes the ethereum fee deterministic but not both. However, the Casper Network provides both a probabilistic and deterministic network pricing model.

User-Developer Friendly Platform

With the Casper protocol, Developers can choose either a private or public and set their permission levels and privacy. In a way, this is paving the way for mass adoption for developers.

The Casper Network features a WebAssembly for developers to create a user-friendly platform. Also, it features an SDK that offers developers the flexibility of deployment without learning new languages.

Upgradeable Smart Contract

The Casper Network can upgrade smart contracts on-chain directly without technical difficulties. This is due to its advanced protocol design and governance procedures.

Sharding Layer 1 Solution

Commonly, users opt-in for Layer 2 solutions to base blockchains for scalability sales. However, this comprises security and decentralization. To solve this, Casper has Sharded Layer 1 configuration.

How Casper Works

Casper functions basically by validating transactions with group validators then continuing with the network. This is quite different from other validation mechanisms like the Proof-of-Work network. For economical reasons, the Proof-of-Work networks centralized validators. However, Casper presents better options like decentralized dependence on validators.

Also, Casper presents stacked tokens that enhance the verification of transactions with validators. In the same way, they're able to receive CSPR rewards because of their PoS consensus protocol. Finally, just like other networks, the Casper Network has tokens for their transactions too.

The Mechanism of How The Casper Network Communicates

There exist networks of nodes that make it easier for peers to reach a consensus on a blockchain. But these nodes are not physical machines. Just like every digital machine, nodes some to network traffic, by presenting ID and addresses.

The Identity

Since Casper ensures the effective security of data it must have high-quality security measures. To do this, Casper registered the fingerprint of members of a blockchain which serves as their identity.

It's worthy of mention that each node has distinct identity features. Each of these features is generated once a new node is activated.

A typical node has an IP and a pair of ports that successfully access the nodes. Also, importantly, a node has an address.

Internodal Connections

Internodal connections refer to the connections that exist between nodes. Before a node successfully creates a connection between nodes it opens a TLS connection that ends on the receiving node.

The node that generates the TLS connection is often referred to as the Client node. On the other hand, the node that receives the TLS connection is the server node. This is important during connection creation as the client node must verify with the client node before generating any signal.

To further explain, TLS connections must contain the same digest and password to prevent connection attacks. The activity of the connection created is dependent on the route of the connection. Connections can be one way or two ways. If one way, connects reconnects with the server but if two ways, the entire connection is discarded. Two ways connections are used to send one-way messages.

Network

It takes at least two nodes to establish a network. Before connecting to a node, the client node will attempt connecting with another node to form a full connection network. The essence of forming a connection is for efficient data transmission.

There are two types of data transmission:

Broadcast

A broadcast allows you to transmit messages once without any accuracy that every node connected will receive the message.

Gossip

Just as you'll expect, gossip is just the distribution of value through a network without directly sending it to each node. It means that only some part nodes connect to the server before the distribution occurs. Some examples of values being gossiped about are endpoints, implementations, and blocks.

It's very critical to note that only consensus messages sent by validators are broadcast. Anything outside of this is gossip.

Node Discovery

When nodes constantly talk about their addresses, it can lead to node discovery. After gossip, each node ensures to establish a connection and records the endpoint. Failure to achieve this is node discovery.

To Wrap It Up

The Casper Network has so much to offer to the digital world. Most especially, in the world of blockchains and developers. With Casper, developers can easily code using Rust or WebAssemly(WASM) programming languages present on Casper.

The Casper Network does not only advance the world of developers, it advances other worlds too. In this article, we discuss the benefits and advancements that the Casper Network presents to the present and the future.

Also read Iron Fish: The Private Cryptocurrency

Iron Fish: The Private Cryptocurrency

Several blockchains have tried to address several issues that face decentralized transactions but none of them have completely addressed the issue. Only one of these blockchains is close to solving this once and for all. This blockchain is the Iron Fish blockchain.

The Iron Fish blockchain is a layer 1 decentralized blockchain platform that offers top-notch privacy security to users. It helps in overcoming the challenges of creating P2P connections in a node by eliminating any barriers that may be present. Also, it has been able to create connections in any browser and any CLI environment.

Surprisingly, the Iron Fish project has so many other benefits it offers its users. In this article, we'll be discussing the benefits, networking mechanism as well as unique features of the Iron Fish blockchain.

What is the Iron Fish Blockchain?

The Iron Fish project is a layer 1 privacy blockchain that offers users strong privacy transactions and wide expansion to the use of cryptocurrency. As a decentralized Proof-of-Work(POW) blockchain, Iron Fish offers users full-private transactions and supports WebRTC. By supporting WebRTC with WebSockets, it reduces the challenge of creating P2P connections.

The Iron Fish aims to run a full node directly without future iterations in browsers or CLI environments. By doing this, it makes it easy for any person to create a node and join a node. It does so by lowering barriers to entry.

Like other blockchains, Iron Fish has six ingredients:

Networking

The Networking component of the Iron Fish gives a run of basic networking startups, stacks, messages types, and sequences. Networking provides information about Iron Fish gossip protocol implementation.

Iron Fish Blockchain has a networking system that enables it to perform its unique functions as a blockchain.

These functions enable it to carry out functions like node interaction, layers transportation, and nodal gossiping.

In building a decentralized blockchain system, creators have not successfully addressed the network address translation {NAT}. It is with the NAT that users can effectively communicate without firewalls and routers. However, by creating sharp accessibility with a combination of Web Sockets and WebRTC, the Iron Fish blockchain has completely addressed the NAT issue.

Asides from the combined action of the Web Sockets and WebRTC, Iron Fish uses an array of techniques to ensure that users connect freely irrespective of their browser and CLI environment. In other words, Iron Fish solves the problem of connection interjection due to technical faults.

That said, once a node is created, there has to be another node ready to connect to the former node. The latter node is known as Bootstrap which, once connected, connects the former node to another peer to form a network. Below, we discuss how nodes form a network in the Iron Fish blockchain.

Startup sequence

Before a network is set up, there has to be a node that initiates a connection or startup. Once the node initiates the startup, the following happens:

The startup node haphazardly connects with another bootstrap node by opening a Web Socket connection. However, users can have specific nodes to connect to. To do this, users can open a command line or use the configuration file.
Once the former node connects to the bootstrap node, the bootstrap node sends a peer list broadcast to other nodes.
From that list, peer nodes decide on which peer to connect with.
You can repeat the third step till the nodal connection is fully saturated. That is, the maximum number of peers in a connection is attained.

Peer connections lifestyle

During a connection, a node maintains a complete knowledge of its peers and other peers connected to it. They do this by occasionally checking for changes in the nodal connections. With that already said, let’s discuss the modality of nodal communication.

Nodal messaging

A nodal message is a unique format member of a group sends messages in a node connection. These messages are usually agreed upon and only peers in a network understand them.

There are different types of messaging with different styles of messaging.

Identity: An identity message helps peers to identify themselves
Peer list: A peer list message contains a list of peers that are actively connected to a node
Signal: A signal message indicates the real-time connection between peers
Cannot satisfy request: Pops up whenever a problem occurs

Nodal messaging styles

Gossip

Gossips occur within networks, sending messages from one node to another. Once a node receives gossip, it forwards it to the nearest connected node. The essence of gossip is to propagate changes that occur in a nodal connection.

Direct RPC

This style of messaging helps to send messages to a specifically connected peer and awaits a response. It does this by its Remote Procedure Call {RPC} stream that comprises a request stream and a response stream.

Fire and Forget

The fire and forget style allows users to send messages to connected peers without any confirmation of receipt. This style of messaging is often useful if users need not worry about the recipient receiving the message.

Global RPC

Messages sent here are sent to specific users and other users in the same network. Global RPC resends the message if there are any errors in the message or if the sender doesn’t get a response. However, this style of message favors known peers over unknown peers.

Mining

The mining section in the Iron Fish blockchain describes how the blockchains construct new blocks for their users. In constructing new blocks, they do this randomly for the sake of proof of work and the miners' reward calculation.

Mining in the Iron Fish blockchain is defined by rules that guide the creation of blocks and verification of peers in an incoming block. While on the other hand, miners are nodes that add new blocks to the blockchain. We say a new block is added if a miner finds a hash of a blocker header below a target.

To prevent block accumulation, the Iron Fish block adjusts the difficulty of mining by 15 seconds. This is done if observed blocks are coming in faster or slower.

To mine on the Iron Fish blockchain, your node must know global data structures and must be familiar with the two most recent blocks.

Storage

The storage section helps users understand the basic structures and models of the Iron Fish. Also, it helps users how this layer is accessible in both browser full nodes and CLI.

In discussing an Iron Fish storage system, we’ll be looking at what the system stores and how the system stores.

What does the system store?

Note

A note is a spendable representation of the payment form. It is quite similar to the UTXO of bitcoin. Nodes are referenced privately and are only referenced publicly on two occasions. The first occasion is when the note is severe as an output for a transaction. The second is when the note is in a hashed form. More importantly, notes are always private.

Nullifier

A nullifier is different from a note and it is unlinkable to a note. A nullifier is a distinct identifier to a note and can only be spent if exposed as part of a transaction.

Once exposed, the nullifier is saved on Iron Fish data structures. These data structures help to keep track of all nodes on the Iron Fish blockchain. And there are two of these data structures

Merkel tree notes

The Merkel tree note as an accumulator data structure presents several elements with a tiny identifier. A Merkel note consists of the following

Value commitment: A Pedersen commitment of a note's value

Note commitment: A windowed Pedersen commitment that hashes the contents of a Merkel note.

Public key: A public key is created after the creation of an associated note. A public key helps the recipient spend and decrypt notes in the nearest future. This is done by using the Diffie Hellman key exchange.

Encrypted note: An encrypted note can be decrypted using a public key.

Note encryption keys: A note encryption key holds all the info necessary to encrypt a note for transaction sake.

Merkel nullifiers

The Merkel tree of nullifiers functions like the Merkel tree of notes in that it accumulates too but it accumulates are nullifiers. Although, unlike the Merkel note, it accumulates notes in a series of nullifiers.

Also, the Merkel nullifier is used to track all Merkel notes spent and accompanying notes.

How then does the iron fish store data?

In storing data Iron Fish uses a storage layer that works as a Command Line Interface(CLI) tool and a browser.

Account creation

Just like other blockchain accounts, users can create an account on the iron fish blockchain using a Sapling protocol. To better understand how this and other components are necessary for account creation, going through the account creation layer will do.

All transactions on the Iron Fish blockchain are influenced by the Sapling protocol. This section explains the key components of an account.

Secret key

The secret key is necessary for constructing one's wallet and it's a 32-byte random number.

Spending key

The spending is a direct derivation of the secret key. The spending key is used by users to spend notes associated with accounts. The spending key comes in pairs:

Spending authorization key(ask): This private key in this pair is derived by using the modifier Blake2b and placing hands on a secret key. After this, the key is converted into a scalar for the jubjub curve.

Authorization key(ak): The authorization key is a derivation of the public key by the multiplication of the spending authorization key.

Nullifier keys

The nullifier keys are derived from the secret keys and are necessary for creating nullifiers and spending a note. The nullifiers' keys are into pairs:

The proof authorization key(NSK): The proof of authorization key is the private component on the pair and it's derived by using the modifier Blake2b and placing hands on a secret key. After this, the key is converted into a scalar for the jubjub curve.

The nullifier deriving key: This key is a derivation of the public key by the multiplication of the spending authorization key.

View key pair

The view key pair comes in two and are:

Outgoing view key(ovk): This key is responsible for the decryption of outgoing transactions.

Incoming view keys (ivk): The incoming view key allows your decryption of incoming transactions.

Transaction creation

This layer gives a run-through on the applications of zero-knowledge in the Iron Fish blockchain alongside its transaction in conjunction with the Sapling method. Also, it gives a run-through on how to validate and balance existing transactions.

Verification and consensus

This final section simplifies the rules on accepting new block transactions. Oftentimes, this is the layer several users visit the most.

Before now, we discussed how nodes are created but didn't discuss why they're created that way. Nodes are created following the blockchain consensus rules.

The blockchain consensus is a verification layer that sets rules on how nodes accept blocks. This consensus layer is what the Iron Fish blockchain operates on.

Moving on, the Iron Fish block will be accepted if it has a valid header and body. At high levels, verifying headers will confirm the amount of work behind a header. To confirm the amount of work behind a header, the system checks for a hash numerically lower than the target.

Validating a block header

To validate a block header, a receiving block header checks all of the following correctly.

sequence
noteCommitment
previous block hash
timestamp
target
randomness
minersFee
nullifierCommitment

Validating a block body

To validate a block body, the system validates all transactions in the block. This is done by checking the validity of each transaction.

Iron Fish Gossip Protocol

The Iron Fish gossip protocol broadcasts new transactions and blocks to every peer in a network. To do this, nodes in a network verify incoming transactions, then send them to other peers. After broadcasting the transactions, the nodes validate the incoming blocks before signaling the node’s transaction ledger. The essence of a peer broadcast is that every peer receives messages quickly.

Iron Fish Zero-Knowledge Proof

A Zero-Knowledge proof refers to cryptographic techniques that verify and proof statements without exposing their underlying data. For the Iron Fish blockchain, it can do this by using zk-SNARKs. Essentially, zk-SNARKs shields Iron Fish users’ identities and balances. Because of this, you successfully hide your identity and transaction details.

Unlike bitcoins and ethereum, Iron Fish blockchain transactions are not in the permanent ledger. Instead of this, Iron Fish users can transact without it revealing their balance or their identity. Experts even say the Iron Fish blockchain creates platforms for developers to carry out their work. Most especially, this platform will favor developers who have no foreknowledge of cryptocurrency.

The Iron Fish network uses the sapling protocol created by Zcash to verify transactions on its blockchain. In verifying transactions, they protect their clients and offer better services.

Not only are they important to developers, but they're also important to cryptographers and enthusiasts in the field. For cryptographers, they can create Rust Coding coinage for their work and other systems.

To Wrap It Up

The Iron Fish blockchain offers several benefits to its users. One of these is the ease of accessibility into networks for node creation. Another one is the advanced level of its decentralized privacy transactions.

So, don't be caught in the traps of archaic systems that disallow you from using effective software. It's with effective software that developers develop interesting and mind-blowing software for blockchains as well as platforms related to blockchains. Ensure to update yourself on all of these and enjoy advanced technological solutions.

Also read: Digital Identification on the Blockchain with Microsoft’s ION

Solana: Exploring the Blockchain

Introduction

Are you a developer looking for the next best blockchain to host your project? are you a cryptocurrency trader that wants to try other Blockchains? Or are you a trader or investor in cryptocurrency but the gas fee is not friendly to you? whatever your interest is or wherever your interest lies, this article will present the Solana Blockchain, one of the most exciting Blockchain that answers most of your questions.

What Is Solana Blockchain?

Solana is a decentralized Blockchain that is fast, secure, scalable. It is a platform where anyone can build a decentralized app. It is essential to know that the Solana blockchain can run around 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) and have a block time of approximately 40ms. Astonishing, isn't it?
In 2017, Anatoly Yakovenco created the Solana blockchain. He and his team created the blockchain to make transactions fully trustless and solve scalability problems.
Yakovenco did not just build Solana from the blues; he had a lot of experience while working with Dropbox as a software engineer and lastly Qualcomm before making the Solana blockchain.
Today, top organizations such as Qualcomm, Microsoft, Apple, and Google support the project from their wealth of experience.

How Does Solana Work?

You may be wondering about how Solana could achieve scalability with running 50,000 transactions in a second. If you have been wondering about it, wonder no more as the reason for this stunning performance is tied to the working principle of Solana.

To ensure all these work together for good, Solana developed eight important innovations by which it operates. The eight innovations are discussed below.

Proof of history
Tower Practical Byzantine Fault Toleration ( Tower PBFT)
Turbine
Gulf stream
Sea level
Pipeline
Cloudbreak
Archiver

Proof Of History

Solana uses a proof of stake consensus that works perfectly with proof of history to determine the transaction time in the protocol.

The proof of history is a record that verifies that an event happened within a specific time frame and keeps track of it. This approach assigns a timestamp for any transaction carried out on the blockchain. It also disallows any involvement either by bots or miners in deciding the order in which blockchain records its transactions. It is different from other blockchains in that it does not wait for other validators to confirm a transaction before it is accepted. Solana allows all validators on its platform to confirm transactions immediately without waiting for another. It can achieve this by making use of SHA-256 - it enables hashing a verifiable delay function sequentially (VDF).

Tower PBFT

Byzantine fault tolerance is an agreement that tolerates failure and defends the computing system against corrupt data and malicious attacks. As a result, all the nodes in the system get the same authentic data all the time.
The tower's practical byzantine fault tolerance ensures that all transactions in the system are verified with the lowest processing power possible. It can do this because it uses the proof of history as a clock - a record of the timestamp of past transactions - before achieving consensus. Hence, Solana becomes faster and more efficient than other blockchains.

Turbine

It is a block propagation protocol that makes transmission to the blockchain node easy.

Gulf Stream

Validators on Solana can now execute transactions faster and reduce confirmation time. All thanks to the gulf stream. The transactions are always at the forefront of the system for execution.

Gulfstream is the mempool-less transaction platform. We must understand what a mempool is to grasp what the Gulfstream entails fully.

What Is A Mempool?

A mempool contains all transactions that are submitted on the blockchain but has not been processed. What these mean is that a mempool is a transaction awaiting confirmation on the blockchain. With this understanding now, we can safely say a Gulfstream is a platform that does not allow delay in a transaction before it's been processed. Interesting right? We will delve into how the gulf stream works and how it helps the Solana network to make faster transactions.

How Does Gulf Stream Work?

In Solana, there is a concept of leader which is the role of a validator when it is appending entries to the ledger. Validators can easily execute a transaction before the set time, reducing the transaction time. This is possible because all validators are aware of the order of upcoming leaders, so they send the transactions to the expected leader before the set time so the leader can process the transactions.

A block occurs on the Solana platform approximately every 800 milliseconds, and it becomes more time-consuming to unfold as they increase. In a worst-case scenario, a fully confirmed block-hashes contains about 32 blocks. A client signs a transaction that points to a recent block-hash that the network has confirmed. The signed transaction is sent to the validators which immediately forward it to the most senior leader in the network. The client knows that the network confirms a transaction and that the block-hash has an expiry time, so the client signs a transaction knowing that it can execute or fail. Immediately the network is ahead of the rollback point, the referenced block-hash expires, and the client knows that the transactions become invalid, never to be executed on the chain.

Sea Level

The sea level is a parallel smart contract runtime. The sea level helps Solana protocol scale across GPUs and SSDs, enabling efficient runtime. In addition, the sea level gives all Solana transactions the ability to run concurrently on the blockchain.

Pipeline

The pipeline mechanism is a processing unit that enables all transactions to be quickly validated, optimized and recurrent across all the nodes in the Solana network. The pipeline follows the outline below to carry out its function.

Data fetching
Signature verification
Banking
Writing

Cloudbreak

Cloudbreak allows the Solana network to achieve a high level of scalability. Before defining Cloudbreak, let's understand the Solana blockchain scalability.

Cloudbreak And How It Achieves Scalability

Scalability can be achieved without sharding, but more is needed than scaling computations alone because the memory used to monitor accounts can easily be overwhelmed, affecting the size and speed of the network. The network used to achieve scalability must take advantage of the account's concurrent read and write access. RAM and SSDs can be used to achieve scalability without sharding, but they come with a huge disadvantage. To solve the challenges posed by using RAM or SSDs for scalability purposes, Solana designed software that allows 100% utilization without involving the hardware. It does not use a traditional database to address scalability but uses different combinations to provide solutions. The mechanisms are highlighted and discussed below.

How Solana Achieves Scalability

a) Memory-mapped file leverage: a file that has its byte mapped in a process's address (virtual) space. The kernel may or may not store the cached memory in the RAM. Although the RAM does not limit the amount of physical memory, the size of the disk can. The disk performance determines the reads and writes.

b) Faster sequential transactions: Sequential transactions are faster than random operations across all the virtual memory stacks.

The accounts data structure of faster sequential operations are:

i) The RAM stores all index of accounts and fork.
ii) About 4MB of memory-mapped files stores all the account.
iii) A memory map stores an account from a proposed fork.
Random distribution of maps across numerous SSDs.
iv) Semantics (copy-on-write) are used.
v) Writes are assigned randomly to a memory map for the same fork.
vi) After each writes, the index is updated.

Solana gets the privilege to write and scale concurrent transactions sequentially and horizontally across many SSDs because the account updates are copy-on-write and assigned to a random SSD. It is not only the writes that are horizontally scaled but read. Read achieves this because forks states updates occur across numerous SSDs.

c) Garbage collections: As accounts get updated, and forks are finalized after rollback, every old account is collected as garbage and freed from the memory.

d) State updates for fork: horizontally scaled sequential reads that happen across all SSDs help with computing Merkle root of the state updates for a fork.

With Cloud break, Solana achieves scalability without sharding and also scales much more than computations. You can look at it as an optimal data structure for concurrent reads and writes across the network.

Archiver

As the name implies, the archiver in the Solana network is the node for storing data from validators. Therefore, many checks go on in the background to ensure that only valid data are stored on the archivers.

The Solana Ecosystem

Solana has been attracting many projects that build its tech stack due to its fantastic advantage in the current cryptocurrency world. Today there are more than 200 projects built on the Solana protocol. Some of the projects are highlighted below.

Cryptocurrency.ai: this is a cryptocurrency exchange platform that supports the trading of spots and futures.
Crowny: It is a platform where consumers can interact with their chosen brands and get discounts, rewards, and loyalties. CRWNY is the token of the crowny project.
Solarians: these are Non-fungible tokens (NFT) operating on the Solana blockchain
Raydium: it is the first automated market maker (AMM) built on the Solana blockchain.
Tether: it is a stable coin and has a high use case in the decentralized finance sector. USDT has announced it would be migrating to the Solana blockchain.
Cope: This project uses an index known as "cope score" to allow traders to score their trading outcomes and access other people's trading outcomes.
Audius is a music streaming platform where content creators can upload their work while consumers stream it.
Senswap: this is the first AMM built on Solana and serum platform
Hydraswap: this is a decentralized trading platform with lots of centralized trading experiences for Its users.
Solyard finance: this is a yield farming aggregator built on the Solana blockchain
Orca: this is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange built on the Solana network.

The Solana ecosystem is growing very fast, with about two hundred and eighteen (218) projects built. The project cuts across various categories such as Defi, AMM, Stablecoins, Governance, Dex, and NFTs.

Sol Token

SOL is the native token that is used on the Solana protocol. The Sol token has two crucial use cases, which are:

It is used to cater for transaction fees and smart contract operations on the protocol.
You can also stake the Sol token to earn a profit on the Solana protocol.

To stake sol token, you should follow the steps below:

Get a wallet such as SolFlare and Exodus that supports Sol staking
Create your staking account by following the instructions on the wallet.
Follow the instructions on the wallet to choose a validator .
Delegate your stake to your chosen validator.

According to coingecko, Sol has a current circulating supply of 272 million out of its maximum store of 488 million. It had an all-time high of $149.91 in September 2021 and currently trades at a value of $142 per Sol token. The current market cap of Sol is around $41,499,887,443.

Conclusion

The Solana blockchain achieves the fastest cryptocurrency transaction per second compared to Ethereum which takes about 15 seconds per block, and bitcoin of 10 minutes per block. Recently, platforms such as OKEx, MXC, and the Solana foundation became partners to launch two new funds that will increase the growth of projects on the Solana ecosystem. If the ecosystem continues this way, it might just become the leading blockchain soon.

Also, read on Stable Coins.

EIP-1559: An Upgrade To Ethereum Fee Model

The Ethereum 1.0 fee model is a win to miners to the detriment of the users. However, EIP-1559, launched on 5th August 2021, is a core proposal to improve the efficiency of the Ethereum transactions, said to be investor-friendly. In the current Ethereum network, users sometimes overpay to be included in a block while miners profit. Not only that, users overpay, but there are also occasions where the network gets congested, resulting in confirmation delays. Besides that, the network is somewhat volatile and leads to losses and less predictable transactions. For example, fees can be as low as 2gwei. Other times it could be ranging from 20-50gwei, while there are occasions when it hits 200gwei, taken 10^9 =1ETH.

The above limitations of the Ethereum network often turn off users. Hence, they go for faster and cheaper transaction fee networks like Binance Smart Chain and others. To address the issues ahead of the Ethereum 2.0 launch in 2022, the Ethereum community is coming up with some proposals called Ethereum Improvement Proposals, EIP. One of such proposals is EIP-1559.

EIP-1559 is an Ethereum improvement proposal positioned to address confirmation delays and less predictable fees structure and introduce a burning mechanism to Ethereum's native token. This article is necessarily discussing in detail the EIP-1559, the benefits, and the implications to users, miners, and the network. Meanwhile, it is important to start with the current Ethereum fee model before the emergence of EIP-1559.

The Current Ethereum Fee Model

The current transaction fee mechanism of Ethereum 1.0 is the auction fee model. Better preferred is the first price auction fee model. The first price auction model is an unpredictable fee mechanism where users bid to make transactions on the Ethereum network. Sometimes, other users might have bid higher before transactions could be processed, making the user's transaction pending until the network stabilizes or drops to the bidding price.
For instance, user A bid to swap on Uniswap. On The other hand, a new token is launched, or other Ethereum network activity increases, making other users push for aggressive buying to make transactions. For those user's transactions to get processed, they need to bid higher and thus get their transactions confirmed faster. Notice that User A, who bid first but with a lower fee, kept waiting for confirmation while others with higher bids have been processed. To reduce the unpredictability of the auction fee model, wallets and exchanges are currently setting estimated fees that are often overpriced. A close look at the auction fee model shows that miners take up the transaction fees, including block rewards and uncle rewards, without feedback to the network.

However, EIP-1559 is promising to do things differently. Some will ask if other auction fee models aren't efficient enough. For instance, the second price auction, also called truthful or kth price auction, where everyone pays a gas price equal to the lowest gas price included in the block, although efficient in the traditional economic model, often results in collusion flaws in a blockchain or distributed network.

The EIP-1559 is designed to solve the following problems of the auction fee model:

Overpayments
No refund of excess gas
No way to guarantee that transactions will go through
A miner takes all transaction models.

To solve the problems above, the Ethereum community has agreed to deploy a complex economic model and real-time blockchain usage, which further provides more transparency to the fees and volatility of the network.

Changing The Game With EIP-1559

EIP-1559, unlike other EIPs, has been debated mainly since Buterin Vitalik announced it in 2019. It brought mixed reactions: miners are against it while users and investors are happy to welcome it. The question lies on why the debate and what is EIP-1559 offering to the Ethereum network?
The bone of contention here is that EIP-1559 changes the way network fee is made on the Ethereum Blockchain and increases the network capacity. Below are how EIP-1559 is changing the game of Ethereum transactions:

Base Fee

This is the algorithmically determined network fee proposed by the EIP-1559. It is also the minimum fee a user pays to include a transaction on the next block. Unlike the auction fee model, it is determined by the network and not the wallets and exchanges. That way, users know the price of the transaction beforehand. However, it does not necessarily make Ethereum network transactions cheaper as they can be adjusted up or down depending on network activities. But it makes the network more user-friendly and more predictable because users will know what they are paying beforehand.
The base fee is charged from users and further burnt, helping to prevent miners from colluding and inflating the network.

Miners Tip

Traditionally, wallets have categories of fees they charge users. Some categorize their estimated network fees as regular, priority, and custom, while others categorize theirs as small, medium, and high. What that means is that users can pay more for faster transactions. The miner's tip, also known as priority tip, is paid to miners to confirm transactions faster. Ideally, miners verify and process transactions in the order of their profitability. This way, miners earn for securing, validating, and processing transactions on the network. However, the EIP-1559 includes a refund mechanism that refunds excesses once they exceed a particular block's maximum fee.

Fee Cap

This is a custom kind of transaction fee that allows users to pay a certain amount of fee they want but is at the mercy of the network activity often. Let's say the network is high and requires over 50% of the gas limit. The transaction takes so long to confirm, waiting for the transaction fee to come close to the capped fee to be included in a block.

Ethereum Capacity

The EIP-1559 comes with a block size improvement. It expands the block size from 12.5M to 25M. With this, the base fee rises and falls depending on the utilization of the block space. The base fee rises when utilization is near 25M and reduces when it nears 12.5M gas demand. By implication, this helps wallets automatically adjust transaction fees, unlike the random estimates of the current network.

Benefits Of EIP-1559

EIP-1559 comes with several benefits to the Ethereum network performance and transactions. It proffers both security, monetary policy and user experience benefits as explained below;

Increase Security On Ethereum

Through a tweet, Evan Van Ness, author of the week in Ethereum, explained that the EIP-1559 upgrade is an important, long-term step against denial of service (DOS) attacks, an attack that denies legitimate users access to services and computer networks.

According to him, "Want to spam the chain while shoplifting ETH in hopes of profiting? Well, with the EIP-1559, that's exponentially more expensive."

As the block space increases to almost 200%, the base fee keeps rising, making it costlier for attackers to afford sufficient block space to launch an attack.

Also, as the block space increases, the base fee rises and is burnt. For that reason, miners, who don't share in the base fee, have weaker incentives to perform near-head reorgs. Find more details about near-reorg and transaction fees effects here.

Better User Experience

EIP-1559 makes fee estimation more predictable, hence, proffers a better user experience for users, unlike struggling to predict possible fees for transactions, say on Uniswap. The EIP allows users to consider three fee categories -base fee, fee cap, and priority tip to predict the possible transaction fee, unlike the legacy method where users bid and the highest is chosen. With EIP, a maximum fee is set for priority tips, and a base fee is set. The user sets a Fee cap which is compared with the base fee. When the Cap is in excess, the difference is returned to the user.

Unlike the current fee model, the EIP fee model helps a better estimation and user experience since the above-stated fees are known beforehand. For a better understanding of what EIP-1559 affects user experience in these fee models, refer here.

Economic Benefits

A term called “preventing economic abstraction of ETH” explains that users should pay with ETH and how healthy it is for the network. Unlike the current fee method, all fees, base, tip, and fee cap, are required to pay using ETH, the native token of the Ethereum network, instead of other assets. Doing that will help to increase the utility of ETH.

Under EIP-1559, all base fees are burnt and thus help reduce Ether's supply, which directly increases the valuation of the token. Hence, people suggest that it will make Ether deflationary.

As stated above that Base fees are burnt for every transaction. It also rises as the block space increases. The increase is thus burnt also, creating deflationary pressure on the supply of ETH. Better explained, more network activity (block space) is equal to more ETH burn equal less ETH supply, invariably more valuation of the native token. By implication, higher block space from 12.5m to 25m creates deflationary pressure.

Implications And Risk

Hard To Debug

The current EIP-1559 code specifications return a user’s maximum FEE CAP value as the gas price before the transaction is mined into a block. After the block has been mined, the gas price field changes to be the base fee. These changes on time and the state of blockchain possess a new challenge for decentralized app developers. Usually, a developer trying to debug their code runs into issues if the behaviour of the blockchain changes. To that effect, the changes associated with EIP-1559 code specifications comes a new debugging challenge.

According to Micah Zoltu, an independent developer, during an All Core Developers meeting said;

“Any time you’re debugging an issue and the behavior changes based on when you look at it, that becomes a very, very hard bug to debug. I suspect that most users and Dapp developers and library authors and whatnot probably are not watching closely on these things and they will not realize that there’s a change in behavior and the gas price field,”

Monopoly Pricing And Miners Attack

The base fees are burnt while the miner's tips are sent to miners to include transactions in a block. Miners can sometimes monopolize pricing. This is a case where they set a minimum tip to receive. They can agree to refuse, including transactions with a certain tip on the block. Meanwhile, a good percentage of miners may not be interested in such a strategy.

EIP-1559 And Miners

The EIP-1559 has some effects on miners. Before explaining further, let's understand that, unlike the current Ethereum network where miners receive block rewards and gas fees for every block mined, the EIP-1559 only rewards miners for particular tips. That means that with the current block capacity of 12.5M, the miners will be losing more. Still, when the block space increases to complete 200% and the base fee rises and is burnt, thereby reducing the supply and increasing the value of ETH, the miner's tip will compensate for other losses.

EIP-1559 And Users

One of the prevailing myths about EIP-1559 is that it will reduce transaction fees. The fact is that it may or may not. Still, the primary aim of EIP-1559 is to deploy a complex economic model to solve the unpredictability of the current transaction model. Besides that, it aims to provide a better monetary policy for users and the network. This way, it reduces the supply of ETH, the native token of the protocol, such that it becomes more attractive to investors.
Since the network's capacity is increased from 12.5M to 25M, the network has more block space. The more utilized the block space is, the higher the base fee to be burnt. This goes a long way to help improve monetary policy.
Simply put, EIP-1559 helps make a more predictable transaction fee possible, unlike the current transaction model where users bid. It ensures a refund if the Fee Cap is more than the Maximum fee and gives feedback to the network when the base fee is burnt.

Conclusion

EIP-1559 is a widely debated Ethereum improvement proposal. It comes with so many advancements and improvements to the Ethereum protocol. They include deploying a more complex economic model and real-time blockchain usage to allow DApps and wallets algorithmically determine fees using the base fee, Fee cap, and priority tip benchmarks. It also increases the network capacity and monetary policy because it makes ETH more attractive to investors and positions it for better market competition in the long run.

You may also read on our latest publication Nexus Mutual.

THORChain: A Decentralized Liquidity Network

Decentralized exchanges have been gaining more and more traction. It has been observed that a total of $1.48 billion in trading volume occured in UniswapV3 alone. Although protocols such as Uniswap, Curve, and SushiSwap significantly provide the exchange services within the Ethereum ecosystem. However, these exchanges do not support the swap between the different blockchain networks. So the question is, is there any way to swap native assets to other blockchains? For example, trade between Binance and Avalanche blockchain.

Here the THORChain comes as the solution to this.

Introduction To THORChain

THORChain is a decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol that allows its users to trade digital assets from one blockchain to another in a frictionless, secured and decentralized manner. There are no custodians and wrappings. Users are paid to stake their assets in the liquidity pool to earn a fee at every swap.

Before we take a deep delve into the mechanics of THORChain, let's have a quick view of its history.

History Of THORChain

THORChain was founded in 2018 in a Binance Chain hackathon by a pseudorandom team. The team hasn’t come up with the real identity until now, but they have continued their research even after the hackathon. Later, advancements in Tenderment, Cosmos SDK, and working implementation of threshold signature scheme- TSS have helped them develop a fully cross-chain decentralized exchange. The TSS here is a cryptographic primitive for distributed key generation and signing.

THORChain will start by allowing trades of Ether(ETH), Bitcoin(BTC), Litecoin(LTC), and Binance Chain(BNB). But more is coming shortly as a limited mainnet called "Multichain ChaosNet" was also released in April 2021.

Also read about Tendermint and Cosmos SDK.

One important thing to mention here is that the native token of THORChain is RUNE. Every token in the THORChain has an equal value associated with the RUNE token in that blockchain.

RUNE

RUNE is the native coin of THORChain, which empowers its economic ecosystem while providing incentives to the network. It serves as a settlement asset or liquidity in the network, providing security and governance to the THORChain network. The total supply available of RUNE is $484 million, while 50% of its supply has been burnt.

Roles

The network has specific roles. These are the following roles in the THORChain network.

• Liquidity Providers

Liquidity providers are the users who add their assets to the pool to gain incentives and rewards.

• Swappers

Swappers use liquidity to swap their asset by paying some amount of fee to the pool.

• Node Operators

Node operators are those who validate transactions, reach consensus and add that transaction to the blockchain.

• Traders

Traders are responsible for maintaining the pool by paying fees with the intent to earn a profit.

THORChain Technology

Churning

Churning is a mechanism in which only one node is active and can sign the transaction while others are waiting on standby. For every 50,000 blocks, the churning mechanism hits the system to replace the older nodes with the set of standby nodes. It makes sure that each node that fulfills the criteria must have a turn in the system to verify the transactions. Even though a high amount of RUNE is required for a fully functioning node, nodes with less RUNE can still verify the transaction without signing it.

THORNodes

THORNode services the THORChain network. THORChain is designed in such a way that anybody with funds can join the secured network. However, it has taken a step further with a high churn schedule that continuously emits the nodes. THORNodes comprises multiple independent servers which run a full node for each connected chain.

Bifröst Protocol

Bifrost is a protocol that provides the service of connecting each chain. Once all the nodes are in sync, the observer starts monitoring the vault address. Whenever they see any inbound transactions, they validate them and convert them into witness transactions. THORChain observes each transaction and collects it's node signer to confirm that they both are identical. As the nodes reach consensus, the transaction moves from the pending state to the finality state.

Source: https://docs.thorchain.org/technology

THORChain State Machine

The state machine is responsible for performing the finalized transaction's logic and delegating them to the outbound vault.

Bifröst Signer

As the transaction reaches a finalized state, the signer marks the valid transaction to their respective chains. This transaction is then sent to the TSS module, where it performs key-signing and broadcasts it to their respective chains.

How THORChain Works?

The THORChain protocol is a network built with Tendermint in a Cosmos SDK ecosystem in which the application layer is not attached to the consensus and networking layers.

The consensus mechanism in THORChain is significant as the nodes inside the protocol must work together to record the transactions coming from different blockchains. To understand how it works, let’s take a simple example over here.

Let’s assume Alice wants to initiate a trade between ETH on the Ethereum network and BNB on the Binance Smart Chain. Alice will send a transaction to her ETH vault, where it keeps being monitored by the THORChain network. Here a Bifrost protocol will act as a connecting layer between the THORChain and the other blockchain networks. Its function is to keep track of the vault address and the inbound transactions. First, ETH is traded to RUNE in the Ethereum network, and as the nodes reach the consensus, the RUNE is then traded into BNB.

One thing which is essential to mention is that if a person wants to trade ETH against BNB. The user will be responsible for paying the ETH gas fee, while the BNB trade fee will be deducted from the outbound.

Conclusion

THORChain envisions empowering its economic ecosystem, and with continuous growth is proving its vision. More and more nodes are adding, increasing the trading volume and total locked value of the network.

Flow Blockchain: A Blockchain For Open Worlds

Introduction

Flow is a user-friendly, decentralized, and, scalable Blockchain designed to support the creation of crypto-related games, digital assets, and applications that power them. Flow ensures scalability without sharding which makes it possible to keep transactions atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID).

Developed in 2018 by dapper labs, the Flow was licensed for use in 2020 for developers interested in creating and trading NFT. It gives the power to control data to the consumers, and it also gives the liberty to create any digital asset that can be traded anywhere in the world. Flow is an open-source Blockchain with its smart contract, which can be used by billions of people to power their applications.

Why Flow?

In 2017, the dapper team launched CryptoKitties on the Ethereum network. CryptoKitties is a crypto-related game that allows you to buy, train, and sell cats online. The game became so popular that it brought congestion to the Ethereum Blockchain, causing it to stop. This event made the dapper’s team develop another Blockchain called FLOW.

Flow was designed to meet the demand of crypto-games like CryptoKitties and other non-fungible token collectibles.

Working Of Flow Blockchain

Flow uses the multi-approach model to operate. This model is grouped into four pillars.

Multi-role architecture
Resource-oriented programming
Developer ergonomics
Consumer onboarding

Multi-role Architecture

The four components that make up the validator node.
Source:https://assets.website-files.com/5f6294c0c7a8cdd643b1c820/5fcff1a16213f9d33a6db5ff_ezgif.com-resize.gif

Traditionally, nodes operate and process Blockchain transactions and carry out all the operations involved in transactions. The roles result in a slow transaction and cause the transaction not to be serialized. Flow was able to solve this problem without compromising scaling productivity with pipelining – a technique used for dividing the roles of the validator nodes into four.

They are as follows:

Consensus nodes: Ensures the transactions on the Blockchain are present and orderly.
Verification nodes: Keeps the execution mode accountable.
Execution nodes: Carries out computation on each transaction.
Collection nodes: Ensure that the network connectivity and data is available for application on the network.

The consensus and verification nodes handle the security of the Blockchain. The nodes ensure that the network is functional and accountable through the use of crypto-economic incentives. If a faulty collection or execution node introduces erroneous data into the Blockchain, any other honest node can punish and recover from the erroneous data. The consensus and verification node only allows a high level of participation from individuals.

The execution and collection node takes care of the scalability and security of the network. The beauty of the multi-role architecture is that all nodes are accountable and verifiable by one another.

Learn about TRON Blockchain.

Resource-Oriented Programming

Flow uses a high-level programming language called "Cadence". Cadence is easy to read and enjoy because of its ergonomic syntax. It is easy to learn, audit, and highly productive. It was designed to be secure, minimize runtime error, and easy to use to create unique and durable applications. To learn Cadence, visit the Flow playground on play.onflow.org.

Developer Ergonomics

A developer determines the tools that can affect their productivity. The criteria for selecting the tools depends upon the installation process, configuration, administration, usage, and maintenance. Flow has designed open-source tools that meet the above criteria. The tools are:

Flow Javascript SDK: It is designed for frontend engineers. You can use Flow javascript SDK to create applications without application binary interface (ABI).
Easy right? That is the flexibility that this tool brings.
Flow Go SDK: This tool is for backend developers interested in interacting with Flow.
Visual Studio Code Extension: This extension can install Cadence on the Visual studio to interact with Flow and check for errors in your code.

Also, Flow made it possible for developers that built their smart contracts to deploy it to the mainnet in a ‘beta form'. This gives room to update before releasing it. Once released, the contract becomes immutable. Furthermore, Flow alerts the users that the code is not complete, so they can decide to wait until completion before use. This method of smart contract deployment is a deviation from the previous ways where a smart contract cannot be updated after launch.

Flow reduces finality i.e. time taken for a transaction to be included in a block permanently - on Blockchains. Finality happens on Flow in seconds, which was previously not possible with other Blockchains.

Consumer-friendly Onboarding

You can pay with fiat, FLOW token or other crypto tokens for you to access the Flow network. Flow also gives the flexibility of owning a smart contract wallet that does not require seed phrases. You can easily create a smart user account on your wallet that is secured and supports automated processes.

Advantages Of Flow

Provision of a scalable Blockchain without sharding the system.
Presence of the multi-role architecture to ensure a faster transaction.
The provision of open-source tools for developers to use when building an application.
Ability to use the network with on-ramp payment.

Conclusion

Flow was designed as a solution to the “slow finality” of the Blockchain without sharding. It had achieved this without compromising the safety and serialization of the Blockchain. The Flow team partnered with the NBA, and this partnership has increased the popularity of the Flow network. Flow has made it possible to build an application that users can enjoy worldwide.

Also, read about Azure Blockchain.

The Cosmos Network: A Comprehensive Guide

Overview

The Cosmos network aims to build an internet of blockchain to enable blockchain networks to communicate with each other. Currently, blockchain systems operate in the form of an “island.” Blockchain networks operate in their world without any form of interoperability amongst themselves. There has been a lot of b bickering and maximalism among supporters of the different blockchain networks.

Many have asked, can there ever be one blockchain network to unite all other blockchains? This brings us to the Cosmos blockchain network, also called the internet of blockchains.

What is Cosmos Network?

The Cosmos network is an independent and decentralized network of blockchain systems. Each of these systems is powered by the Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus algorithm. It serves as an ecosystem of blockchains with the ability to scale and interoperate with each other. Before the advent of Cosmos, blockchain networks cannot communicate with each other. They are not easy to build and can only handle quite a small amount of transactions.

The Cosmos network aims to create a system where a blockchain system can share data, communicate and transact with another blockchain. Cosmos’ inter-blockchain protocol was launched in February 2021. By allowing blockchain interoperability, Cosmos eliminates the need for different blockchain networks to compete ruthlessly to become the best. With Cosmos, many blockchain networks can coexist with one another, while leveraging their individual advantages. And use cases.

The Cosmos blockchain network goes beyond making it possible for different blockchains to interact and share data. It has also created a streamlined process that makes it possible for developers to create their own custom blockchain. The creation of a functional blockchain system takes years but it can be achieved within months using Cosmos. To showcase the immense power of the Cosmos blockchain network, the team built a copy of Ethereum on Cosmos. The Ethereum copy is known as Ethermint and it works just like the parent Ethereum network. It is also very much compatible with already existing smart contract features and other Ethereum tools like MetaMask.

The History of the Cosmos Network

In 2017, Interchain Foundation, a non-profit establishment that funds open-source blockchain projects contracted Tendermint Inc. to develop and launch the Cosmos software. The Tendermint platform was founded by Jae Kwon. He developed his own byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism. Kwon also contributed to the Cosmos whitepaper as a co-author.

The Cosmos blockchain network comprises independent blockchains that use the byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism. Blockchain networks that do not utilize BFT algorithms connect to the Cosmos blockchain network using “adoptor” blockchains. The Cosmos network wasn’t designed for a particular use case; rather it can adapt to suit multiple use cases.

Cosmos has two different types of blockchains; the Zones and Hubs. Zones are the regular blockchain while hubs connect zones with one another on the network. Cosmos Hub was the first to be launched in the Cosmos ecosystem. It is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain system with ATOM as the native blockchain.

The Inter-Bloklchain Communication (IBC) Protocol

Cosmos’ IBC protocol was designed to solve the lack of communication and data sharing between different blockchain networks. For blockchain to enjoy widespread real application, its ability to interoperate and communicate with both external and internal blockchain protocols is very essential. You can imagine a telephone network with the capacity to only communicate with those in its immediate geographical location. It will certainly not last.

The Cosmos IBC enables makes it possible for several blockchains to communicate seamlessly with one another.

A Deep Dive into the Ontology Network.

The Cosmos SDK

It is an open-source and scalable infrastructure designed in such a way that it builds multi-asset public PoS blockchains. The Cosmos SDK can also be deployed to build permissioned proof-of-authority (PoA) blockchain systems. It also serves as a modular framework that can be used to construct application-based blockchain networks and not virtual machine-based applications. Software engineers always seek simplicity and ease of use when trying to build interoperable and application-specific blockchains.

Virtual machine-based blockchain networks like Ethereum were built to host application development on existing blockchain as smart contracts. There are certain specific use cases of smart contracts that are beneficial, like in the case of single-use applications. However, they fall short when it comes to the development of complex decentralized networks. Smart contract technology is limited in its versatility, technical performance, and sovereignty.

With the Cosmos SDK, developers can choose between using pre-built modules and their own custom-built modules. Such a feature allows developers to test their minimum viable product before they launch their mainnet. Additionally, with the Cosmos SDK, users can connect their individual blockchain to the Cosmos network using IBC, increasing liquidity as well as user adoption. Also, the Cosmos SDK has been utilized in creating key blockchain and crypto projects like Binance, Kava, Terra, and IRISNet.

What are ATOMS And What Can You Do With Them?

ATOMs are the native token of the Cosmos Network. The first ATOM tokens were created when the Cosmos mainnet was launched. It was distributed to initial donors, token sale participants, the Cosmos Foundation, and the core developers of the network. Today, new ATOMs are routinely generated as rewards for the network validators.

Holders of the ATOM token can stake and validate blocks, vote on the governance issues of the network. The holder can also pay for transaction fees on the Cosmos network using the ATOM tokens. You can decide to run your own validator node in order to earn rewards in ATOMs or you can delegate your ATOM coins to a validator. These validators lock their ATOMs as well as run specialized software that helps to maintain the Cosmos network. This is achieved by proposing new blocks and validating transactions.

Some dApps Built On the Cosmos Network

The Cosmos blockchain network has become the popular go-to place for dApp developers who desire to build efficient cross-chain dApps. Some prominent decentralized applications (dAPPs) currently operating on Cosmos blockchain include:

Anchor: It is a financial platform that provides low-volatility interest rates on deposits of stablecoins.
Flairs: It is a payment network that allows multiple assets and payment systems like games and DeFi.
Klever: It is a mobile app that has an integrated blockchain wallet with browser and portfolio.

Conclusion

The Cosmos network is still in its “infant” stage and hasn’t yet realized the vision in the project's whitepaper. However, the network is moving in the right direction and with time, it will certainly realize its full potential in the blockchain space.