In 2010, in the early days of Bitcoin’s creation, BM challenged Satoshi Nakamoto and believed that Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism must be changed and proposed improvements.
However, the arrogant Satoshi Nakamoto did not adopt it. After emphasizing the importance and necessity of Bitcoin decentralization, he responded aggressively: If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’ t have time to try to convince you, sorry.
Several years later, BM founded EOS and realized his own consensus mechanism.
Since it is a rumor, let’s just listen to it. But when it comes to consensus mechanisms, there are many things to explore. With the development and evolution of technology, the current mainstream consensus is PoW, PoS and PoS variants. Which consensus is better has always been a hot topic for discussion.
As we all know, the “impossible triangle” problem has become one of the important constraints in the development of blockchain. Therefore, whoever can better solve the problem can become the most ideal consensus mechanism.
So, who is the “ideal country” of consensus?
PoW gradually deviating from the spirit of Satoshi Nakamoto
In Bitcoin mining, Satoshi Nakamoto designed PoW (Proof of Work Mechanism).
Every 10 minutes, along with the generation of new blocks, the Bitcoin network will issue a certain amount of Bitcoin and reward it to the selected bookkeeping node.
From the surface of this mechanism, PoW is a model that pays more for more work. With higher computing power and time spent, the more digital currencies you can obtain.
However, it needs to consume a lot of energy to calculate the result of the hash function during its operation, which is easy to cause a waste of computing resources, because these operations themselves are not related to the value of the blockchain itself. Moreover, the confirmation time of the block is difficult to shorten, and it is prone to fork, and it is necessary to wait for multiple confirmations.
The new blockchain must find a different hashing algorithm, otherwise it will face a computing power attack. At the same time, each time a consensus is reached, the entire network needs to participate in the calculation, and the performance efficiency is low.
In addition, with the decrease of Bitcoin, the demand for computing power is getting higher and higher. In order to accelerate the speed of acquiring Bitcoin, a new method of mining resistance in mining pools has been born. The emergence of mining pools has disrupted the balance of Bitcoin and other encrypted digital currency systems to a certain extent, and the Matthew effect has gradually emerged.
So far, the pure PoW mechanism has no SHD completeness at all, and it deviates from the original intention of Satoshi Nakamoto.
“Perfect Alternative” PoS
So PoS (Proof of Stake Mechanism), which is considered to be able to replace PoW, appeared.
The main difference between PoW and PoS is how to determine the voting rights in the blockchain consensus. In PoW, the voting power is proportional to the computing power of the node; in PoS, the voting power of the system is proportional to the proportion of equity held. Once PoS was proposed, it was favored by people.
Compared with PoW, PoS will have a great improvement in performance, but it is also limited. And limited by defects such as the issue of TOKEN and the difficulty in determining the number of accounting nodes, it still cannot be a perfect alternative to PoW.
Secondly, the PoS system requires a highly secure network to resist hacker attacks. Currently, there is no public chain with such strength. What’s more deadly is that in the PoS public chain, the block-producing rights of the blockchain can only be determined by the head player, which makes the PoS public chain a network that is essentially monopolized and dominated by giants.
From this point of view, PoS cannot be a perfect alternative to PoW, so people began to think about whether the original mechanism can be changed, including BM, which was originally taken by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Fortunately, those who still have “consensus ideals” have never stopped exploring. Among them is the original VDS development team. The APoS mechanism they proposed may be a fire of hope that ignites our consensus ideals.
APoS: the original intention of the regression algorithm
Looking back at the evolutionary law of the consensus mechanism, we found that there is no consensus mechanism that can solve the problem of SHD completeness. Can the two types of consensus be mixed so as to integrate the advantages of the two while avoiding some drawbacks?
When the VDS development team encountered a bottleneck in the VDS public chain 2.0, they were inspired by Polkadot and proposed a ring resonance proof of stake algorithm (Λ Proof of Stake, APoS), also known as the cosmic constant algorithm Λ-Dimension.
The VDS development team creatively improved and combined PoS and PoW algorithms to form a resonance APoS consensus mechanism.
On the one hand, APoS returns to the original spiritual core of Bitcoin-decentralization. On the other hand, it solves the “impossible triangle” problem based on game theory mechanism design and Nash equilibrium thinking, and achieves security, efficiency, and decentralization. Compatible, and finally constructed a “blockchain technology system that is more in line with the current economic and financial structure needs than the original Bitcoin algorithm mechanism.”
The consensus algorithm itself is beautiful, but we increasingly lose sight of its true colors.
The reliability of mathematical algorithms is based on its preconditions. The accuracy of mathematics is conditional. Every theorem has certain preconditions and assumptions, and these preconditions cannot be proved by mathematics itself but need to be established and verified through analysis of the real world. These preconditions will also be tested in the constantly changing real world.
Today, ADS based on the APoS consensus mechanism has conducted multiple internal and public testing of the code, and has made corresponding optimizations and improvements in response to the problems that have arisen. According to the official report, ADS will be global on March 1, 2021, Singapore time 17: 00 is open for registration and subscription. In the kernel period, about 15,000 internal testers in the 123 ring will open the exchange to mix and trade about 10 days after the ring is full.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.