Earlier this week, we published a short video showing the simulation of Storecoin's BlockFin Consensus algorithm. The simulation proves the correctness of the algorithm by running Messagenodes in the adversarial environment where 1/3 of them are Byzantine. The Byzantine nodes exhibit one of the following behaviors arbitrarily whenever they are required to participate in the consensus process.
1. Drop messages. This behavior also simulates crash.
2. Delay messages. The faulty nodes delay delivering the messages arbitrarily, but eventually deliver the correct messages.
3. Corrupt messages. The faulty nodes deliver corrupted messages.
Please comment if we should include a specific Byzantine behavior that is not covered under the above categories.
What's next?
- Video of the BlockFin implementation covering the behavior of the Validator network, transactions, and end-to-end block creation and validation process -- estimated April, 2019
- Technical whitepaper --estimated end of June
- Open source the implementation -- estimated end of 2019
- Storecoin testnet itself -- estimated end of 2019
Topic: Introducing Storecoin, a zero-fee cryptocurrency (Read 314 times)
@storecoindev
Thanks for the answer, don't forget to point us to this new thread. I will look for the explanation for hyperinflation prevention there.
If this thread supposed to be about this new type of blockchain, than maybe it would be better to change the title, in order to point out its purpose?
Now I would like to ask you few more questions, first about ARB. What is it and how it's different from traditional broadcasts?
The second is about the two types of nodes. Who or what decides on which type of node client becomes?
Are rewards between both type of nodes going to vary based on the node type?
Thanks for the answer, don't forget to point us to this new thread. I will look for the explanation for hyperinflation prevention there.
If this thread supposed to be about this new type of blockchain, than maybe it would be better to change the title, in order to point out its purpose?
Now I would like to ask you few more questions, first about ARB. What is it and how it's different from traditional broadcasts?
The second is about the two types of nodes. Who or what decides on which type of node client becomes?
Are rewards between both type of nodes going to vary based on the node type?
By the looks of it, this is inflationary currency, with unlimited supply? Or limited to 1bilion, I don't get it.
How would you prevent hyperinflation, if its in fact a inflation friendly token?
What will be the incentive to run validator or massage nodes if there are no fees?
No ICO but ICO nevertheless... no matter how you gonna call it, you selling to the "public", always a warning sign :/
But interesting in a way. Observing
How would you prevent hyperinflation, if its in fact a inflation friendly token?
What will be the incentive to run validator or massage nodes if there are no fees?
No ICO but ICO nevertheless... no matter how you gonna call it, you selling to the "public", always a warning sign :/
But interesting in a way. Observing
The token supply is limited to 1 billion. We'll publish a separate post on our economic model where the emission of the yearly circulating supply based on a block reward curve will be discussed. We want to keep this thread for discussion on BlockFin.
The Validators and Messagenodes are rewarded based on the yearly inflation determined by the block reward curve mentioned above. Collectively we call these nodes as miners, although there is no mining involved in the traditional PoW sense. The miners earn the block reward for every block they help assemble and validate. Of course, some miners may be offline for certain duration of time and they may not participate in the consensus, so they won't be earning the block reward for the blocks they didn't help secure. Miners can earn additional uptime bonuses, if they meet the daily uptime criteria. This bonus is designed to encourage uptime, but at the same time, allow for occasional crashes and system reboots. The slide on BlockFin at http://storeco.in/blockfin makes a case why true decentralization and high throughput cannot be achieved with technology alone. We believe that economic incentives are necessary for active participation (which also improves the security of the network), which helps with the improved throughput. Of course, more number of nodes participating results in true decentralization as well.
On the ICO, we are using "milestone-based" private token sales to fund our research and work. The purpose of this thread is to announce BlockFin and have a healthy discussion on it.
Thanks for the kind comments.
By the looks of it, this is inflationary currency, with unlimited supply? Or limited to 1bilion, I don't get it.
How would you prevent hyperinflation, if its in fact a inflation friendly token?
What will be the incentive to run validator or massage nodes if there are no fees?
No ICO but ICO nevertheless... no matter how you gonna call it, you selling to the "public", always a warning sign :/
But interesting in a way. Observing
How would you prevent hyperinflation, if its in fact a inflation friendly token?
What will be the incentive to run validator or massage nodes if there are no fees?
No ICO but ICO nevertheless... no matter how you gonna call it, you selling to the "public", always a warning sign :/
But interesting in a way. Observing
The project looks very interesting, because the stable team and achievements so far. We will follow the project along the journey. Good luck!
I'll be reading along with the discussion here, thanks for this thread!
Storecoin is a zero-fee, p2p protocol with a governance of checks and balances. Our aim is for STORE to become the internet's reserve, zero-fee cryptocurrency.
It's a common belief that public blockchains can't be both scalable and decentralized — they suffer from scalability trilemma.
The Storecoin team has invented a leaderless, asynchronous, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithm called BlockFin that solves for this.
We’ll be publishing the BlockFin whitepaper in the coming months.
Fig. 1 — Storecoin’s two-tier network of Validators and Messagenodes
BlockFin is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based consensus algorithm and it addresses scalability in layer-1 in contrast to layer-2 approaches like, sharding, off-chain transactions, etc. Our goal to achieve both scalability and decentralization requires us to build the blockchain differently from how the chain is constructed traditionally — one block at a time, aided by either a Proof-of-Work or randomized leader election.
Fig. 2 — BlockFin block assembly and validation process
One side effect of the “one block at a time” construct is the possibility of chain forks, which can happen at every block height. This possibility prevents blocks from finalizing instantly — a certain number of future blocks must be built on top of the current block to improve the probability of irreversibility of the current block. Moreover, all the nodes must run the expensive logic to determine the longest chain for every block added to the blockchain. BlockFin addresses this waste in order to achieve high scalability.
BlockFin divides block creation into a multi-step process and pipelines the steps so they can run in parallel. To facilitate parallel processing, BlockFin uses a two-tier network of nodes as shown in fig. 1, where each tier manages a specific responsibility during the block creation process.
The inner tier of Messagenode network is responsible of building the blocks while the outer tier of Validator network validates, secures, and finalizes the blocks.
The Messagenodes create a chain of empty blocks at genesis time and when required in the future. This ensures that there is a single chain, whose authenticity and integrity can be verified with the Merkle root of signatures of the Messagenodes in the empty blocks. When transactions are submitted to the Validators, they don’t broadcast them to other Validators, but instead, send them to the Messagenode network. To improve the efficiency of block assembly process, Validators batch incoming transactions by waiting for a finite amount of time. The Messagenodes assemble transaction batches into pre-existing empty blocks using Storecoin’s agreement protocol — Asynchronous Reliable Broadcast, ARB. ARB ensures that at least (⅔ + 1) Messagenodes agree on which transaction batches are included in the next empty block. Once an agreement is reached, the Messagenodes notify the connected Validators that the assembled block is ready for validation.
The Validators validate the transactions in the assembled block and sign the block at the end of the validation process. The block is finalized when at least (⅔ + 1) Validators sign the block.
Fig. 3 — Two block hashes — block creation hash and block validation hash — secure Storecoin blockchain
The blocks in Storecoin blockchain are secured by two block hashes as shown above. A hash created at block creation time links all the block and a second hash links all the finalized blocks.
The block assembly and validation steps are pipelined, so they can run in parallel by respective tiers as shown in the following diagram, resulting in improved scalability.
Fig. 4 — Pipelined block assembly process
Notice that all the nodes participated in the block assembly and validation process. There is no leader election, no overhead associated with running “longest chain” logic, and no economic advantage to defeating the protocol. All the nodes share the block rewards for every block they help assemble and validate. This guarantees true decentralization and censorship resistance because every node participates in the consensus process and censorship requires ⅓ nodes colluding.
We refer the above approach to creating the blocks as “building the blockchain in public”. Every step of the block assembly and validation process can be watched by anyone on the network as it happens.
In the next few weeks we will provide additional details on the ARB protocol discussed above. Specifically, we will discuss how the block assembly works in a leaderless way. If you are interested in participating in a public peer review of the technical whitepaper, please let us know at https://storeco.in/blockfin.
It's a common belief that public blockchains can't be both scalable and decentralized — they suffer from scalability trilemma.
The Storecoin team has invented a leaderless, asynchronous, Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithm called BlockFin that solves for this.
We’ll be publishing the BlockFin whitepaper in the coming months.
Fig. 1 — Storecoin’s two-tier network of Validators and Messagenodes
BlockFin is a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based consensus algorithm and it addresses scalability in layer-1 in contrast to layer-2 approaches like, sharding, off-chain transactions, etc. Our goal to achieve both scalability and decentralization requires us to build the blockchain differently from how the chain is constructed traditionally — one block at a time, aided by either a Proof-of-Work or randomized leader election.
Fig. 2 — BlockFin block assembly and validation process
One side effect of the “one block at a time” construct is the possibility of chain forks, which can happen at every block height. This possibility prevents blocks from finalizing instantly — a certain number of future blocks must be built on top of the current block to improve the probability of irreversibility of the current block. Moreover, all the nodes must run the expensive logic to determine the longest chain for every block added to the blockchain. BlockFin addresses this waste in order to achieve high scalability.
BlockFin divides block creation into a multi-step process and pipelines the steps so they can run in parallel. To facilitate parallel processing, BlockFin uses a two-tier network of nodes as shown in fig. 1, where each tier manages a specific responsibility during the block creation process.
The inner tier of Messagenode network is responsible of building the blocks while the outer tier of Validator network validates, secures, and finalizes the blocks.
The Messagenodes create a chain of empty blocks at genesis time and when required in the future. This ensures that there is a single chain, whose authenticity and integrity can be verified with the Merkle root of signatures of the Messagenodes in the empty blocks. When transactions are submitted to the Validators, they don’t broadcast them to other Validators, but instead, send them to the Messagenode network. To improve the efficiency of block assembly process, Validators batch incoming transactions by waiting for a finite amount of time. The Messagenodes assemble transaction batches into pre-existing empty blocks using Storecoin’s agreement protocol — Asynchronous Reliable Broadcast, ARB. ARB ensures that at least (⅔ + 1) Messagenodes agree on which transaction batches are included in the next empty block. Once an agreement is reached, the Messagenodes notify the connected Validators that the assembled block is ready for validation.
The Validators validate the transactions in the assembled block and sign the block at the end of the validation process. The block is finalized when at least (⅔ + 1) Validators sign the block.
Fig. 3 — Two block hashes — block creation hash and block validation hash — secure Storecoin blockchain
The blocks in Storecoin blockchain are secured by two block hashes as shown above. A hash created at block creation time links all the block and a second hash links all the finalized blocks.
The block assembly and validation steps are pipelined, so they can run in parallel by respective tiers as shown in the following diagram, resulting in improved scalability.
Fig. 4 — Pipelined block assembly process
Notice that all the nodes participated in the block assembly and validation process. There is no leader election, no overhead associated with running “longest chain” logic, and no economic advantage to defeating the protocol. All the nodes share the block rewards for every block they help assemble and validate. This guarantees true decentralization and censorship resistance because every node participates in the consensus process and censorship requires ⅓ nodes colluding.
We refer the above approach to creating the blocks as “building the blockchain in public”. Every step of the block assembly and validation process can be watched by anyone on the network as it happens.
In the next few weeks we will provide additional details on the ARB protocol discussed above. Specifically, we will discuss how the block assembly works in a leaderless way. If you are interested in participating in a public peer review of the technical whitepaper, please let us know at https://storeco.in/blockfin.
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