A Scalable Protocol for Trustless, Permissionless Cryptocurrency Interoperability
On October 31, 2008, 46 days after the largest bankruptcy in world history, Satoshi Nakamoto released the the Bitcoin Whitepaper, which became the seminal blueprint for a cryptocurrency revolution. At the time of the paper’s release, the world was suffering a financial crisis, a cyclical and predictable consequence of a 400 year-old economic system controlled by central banks and regulated by nation-states.
Nation-states sanction and have become dependent upon central banks to finance large budget deficits at the expense of sound money and savers. Governments encourage asset price inflation in order to benefit favored special interest groups and leveraged financial firms. Rather than tolerate a natural deleveraging cycle that would reward good behavior and punish poor risk-taking; nation-states resolutely undermine economic equity and guard the money cartel of central banks through tacit approval of massive monetary easing programs and implementation of regulations that are designed to hinder competition and alternatives for citizens seeking to opt out of an inequitable and exploitative monetary system.
The Only “Fork” that Matters: Economic Liberty vs. “Enterprise Blockchain” regulated by Nation-States
Central banks are unelected and not officially part of nation-state governments. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies provide a way to opt out of the failed nation-state and central banking system. Regulatory bodies and agents of the current failed system have sought to regulate and tax cryptocurrencies as if they were coin minted by a sovereign nation rather than code created by individuals.
Nation-states are creating a regulatory framework to remove the anonymity, neutrality and trustless and permissionless properties of cryptocurrency to hinder the mass adoption of an efficacious alternative to the monetary tyranny of today’s central banking system. Regulating crypto-to-fiat gateways is not enough for nation-state regulators, who seek to bring all cryptocurrency-related activity under their jurisdiction and complete control, while central banks and their pseudo-nationalized too-big-to-fail financial institutions continue to operate freely with no democratic oversight or transparency. With the ultimate goal being the complete annihilation of cryptocurrency as a vehicle to opt out of the current corrupt and failing monetary system, nation-states have sought to restrict decentralized exchanges and broaden their regulatory powers by labeling smart contracts and code as “security tokens,” etc.. It is not in the interest of the citizens of the world to engage in a system that allows nation-states to regulate cryptocurrencies and their interoperability. Through their exchange regulations and KYC/AML policies designed to enable exclusion powers, permit censorship and protect taxation authority, nation-states seek to create a robust regulatory straitjacket to monitor, tax and police cryptocurrency activity to eliminate citizens’ option to opt out.
Finality
It is time for us to counter these dark forces and fight for the economic liberty that cryptocurrencies finally make possible. For the first time in history, the technological tools are available to us to radically transform our corrupt and economically unideal system. In order to acquire economic liberty, preserve neutrality and protect the rights of the individual, we must seek to create a new cryptocurrency interoperability framework outside of nation-state regulatory powers. To make this possible, we need an interoperability layer that makes it impossible or incredibly difficult for third party interference in coin exchange and chain-to-chain communication.
We propose a scalable second layer protocol allowing any willing party to build and operate a trustless and permissionless cryptocurrency exchange capable of processing millions of transactions per second. A root blockchain contract owned by the operating party securely holds user funds, which are tradable within its sidechain with instant finality. This design is secured by the operating party, periodically committing the merkle root of user accounts and proofs from the prior merkle root to the root blockchain contract. This second layer design serves as an extremely high-throughput, secure platform on which to build trustless, permissionless cryptocurrency exchanges. A future Finality root chain, with its own native consensus-generating Finality cryptocurrency, will connect Finality second layer protocols operating on various root chains to establish cross-chain interoperability.
Who is Behind Finality?
Ho Lee Huo - Inventor of the Finality Protocol
Yoshi Kumatama - Helped Ho Lee with research and stuff
Anyone who still believes in the true potential of crypto
Documentation: Finality 1.0
https://finality.network/documentation/Finality_1.0.pdf
Coin
No ICO, No Premine, No Foundations, No Lawyers, No Marketing, No Selling, No Selling-out
Just the Coin and Code
We’re conducting the world’s first M-RAD (Massive Randomized Airdrop), the date of which is to be announced. The M-RAD will airdrop an ERC20 token according to predetermined and equitable ruleset. The Finality ERC20 will later be redeemable 1-to-1 for the native consensus-generating Finality cryptocurrency when the Finality root chain is live.
We believe that the value of a coin reflects the value of a project, and it makes little difference if capital is raised via an ICO or through an increase in the price and market value of the coin circulating in the open market. In fact, we believe conducting an ICO results in a worse outcome due to the regulatory burdens and costs imposed by nation-state regulations and a centralized ICO Foundation. Having as many hodlers and buidlers as possible is important to us and to the success of the project. Having decentralized contributions by virtue of individuals buidling and hodling the coin, developing code for the project and investing human time and energy is more efficient and advantageous than a centralized ICO Foundation holding, managing and distributing fiat and crypto funds from individual contributors to a group of developers chosen by the foundation.
A Final Note
We thank all those who have contributed to this project and those who will make future contributions. We also thank those who still believe that the most colossally beneficial impact of crypto to humankind involves dethroning the central banking and nation-state system. We encourage everyone to join and proceed with the project. Our friends have set up a website for informational and educational purposes that will initially serve as a home for the project: https://finality.network. But, there is no designated leadership, and there is no small inner circle of technologists with over-weighted influence. For this revolution to prevail, it must be open to all, and it must be leaderless. As for us, we walk away knowing that we made our small contribution.
-ho lee & yoshi
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