Features of the Catalyst Network
This week’s article will be slightly different: I am going to be focusing on how the Catalyst Network has been designed to overcome the challenges and barriers to adoption that current blockchain technology is facing.
If blockchain is such a promising new technology, why hasn’t it been adopted by governments and businesses worldwide already, 10 years since its inception?
The answer is because there are several issues that exist with current blockchain and DLT technology that keep businesses from being able to adopt it as a feasible alternative to existing ledger and database technologies.
The good news is that the Catalyst Network has made moves to solve these issues and work to create a Distributed Ledger Network that transcends the roadblocks to widespread adoption that have plagued existing blockchain technology.
Utilizing Atlas City’s unique Distributed File System (DFS), Catalyst provides a streamlined solution to reduce “bloating” of the blockchain.
The DFS is basically designed to partition past ledger cycle updates into ‘snapshots’ of the past ledger states, much less storage and compute-intensive method of storing the past blocks on the chain.
The snapshot partitions are known as “Historical Ledger Partition Updates”, and are stored on the network in a distributed fashion, meaning that the entirety of the ledger is not stored locally on every node, but rather is distributed in parts amongst the nodes in the network that have decided to participate in storage while still being accessible in its entirety by every node that desires to view it.
The design is twofold: 1) There is no longer a need to store the entirety of the ledger locally on each node freeing up precious storage space and computing power, while 2) still being accessible in its entirety to each node that wishes to view the past ledger states.
The result is a ledger that is much more lightweight, and processing-efficient than current blockchain networks.
Existing popular blockchains such as the Bitcoin network and the Ethereum network are facing what is called “the bloating problem”.
Basically, because in a distributed ledger or cryptocurrency network the entirety of the ledger needs to be stored locally by every device (node) on the network, as more and more people use a certain blockchain for their transactions, the blockchain grows so big that it becomes difficult to store easily on each individual node.
For example, in the Ethereum network, the Ethereum “archive node”, is taking more than 2.3 TB of space (you can track their size here), while another type, the “full node”, is using about 180 GB. This means that to work with the Ethereum network, your client needs to have at least 180 GB of storage. This puts Ethereum out of range of small storage, low resource devices.
What’s happened on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks is that obscenely large-space hard drives have become a necessity for every node owner on the network to have in order to keep processing transactions, which considerably reduces the speed of processing new transactions — and in the case of Bitcoin, even more so given the 10 — minute requirement for each new block addition.
Both the Bitcoin network and the Ethereum network have recognized the problematic nature of bloating, and many efforts have been made to find ways to reduce this bloating — such as what is known as sharding.
A great article by Investopedia explaining what sharding can be found here, and a good (albeit more technically minded) article on the issues that arise with the Sharding technique can be found here.
The Catalyst Network’s DFS is a file system that also allows for rich file types, such as images, documents and video to be stored securely as on the network along with transaction records on the ledger.
By creating a partition of the database in which larger files can be stored, a new dimension of transactions can occur — ones that include the transfer and access of rich files that currently can’t be stored on any existing blockchain.
As described above, the design of the DFS also keeps the storage of these rich file types distributed amongst all the nodes rather than stored in its entirety on each node, so the impossibility of storing rich file types on current blockchain technology is solved by this system.
Current blockchain technologies do not have the capacity to store any data other than transaction information on the network. This is because the blocks are designed as ledger states, and ledger states only, which eliminates the possibility for anything else to be stored on it.
The Catalyst Network’s different Account types and the option for heightened confidentiality
One of the things that makes the Catalyst network unique from other blockchain networks is that it offers the option for three different types of accounts.
The Catalyst Network has been designed to give the option of owning what is called a confidential account: this is an account in which the parties taking place in a transaction, as well as the transaction amount itself, is hidden using advanced cryptography.
In current public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, all transactions amounts as well as pseudonyms for the parties making the transactions are all made visible for everyone to see.
With the blockchain technology that exists right now, the ‘anonymity’ that is touted by bitcoin enthusiasts is technically incorrect — it is pseudonymity, not true anonymity.
Because all transactions and account balances are public on a blockchain like Bitcoin, people’s account names are hidden by a random-looking string of numbers and letters, known as a hash.
While the hash doesn’t reveal any identifying information about who the hash is linked to in real life, someone with good enough detective work could analyze the string of transactions made to and from a certain hash and feasibly work out who the hash belongs to — and thereby know all of the transactions a certain person is taking part in.
This has lead to a number of ways that have been developed to provide a higher degree of anonymity — from a method called “coinmixing”, to the process of recycling and generating new hash addresses for different transactions.
The option for a confidential account eliminates this need and could be very desirable to someone who, for example, is receiving their salary over a blockchain network, and who also pays his rent via the blockchain.
If this person’s landlord looked at the hash pseudonym that belongs to him or her, they could trace that hash back to the salary payment that this person received — thereby knowing how much he is earning every month. A less than benevolent landlord could then proceed to charge this person a higher rent based on how much they are earning.
The confidential accounts that are available on the Catalyst Network hide the nature of the transaction — they essentially hide the parties that the transaction is taking place between, as well as hiding the amount being transferred between the parties. Additionally, the account balance of a confidential account is also hidden, unlike existing blockchains in which every account balance is known and visible, albeit pseudonymous.
Non-confidential accounts are basically the usual public blockchain type account. These accounts have a balance which is public, and the transactions made between these accounts and other non-confidential accounts are also publicly visible.
Because not everyone is bothered by having a publicly visible account balance and are happy with the level of pseudonymity that existing blockchain networks provide, the Catalyst network will provide the option for this type of standard account as well.
The third type of account offered by the Catalyst Network is the smart contract-based account. These accounts support what is called a ‘smart contract’ which is basically a code embedded into an account which can be triggered by a transaction or other message sent to the account.
An example of a hypothetical smart contract could be a code associated with none of these accounts that are designed to send a rented or bought movie file to another party upon receiving payment for that movie — completely automatedly, and in real-time.
The Catalyst Network is designed to allow parties in the network to make transactions in almost any cryptocurrency of their choice — not only the Catalyst Network’s KAT token. This makes it possible for people owning cryptocurrencies of their choice to be able to participate in the network.
As it is today, blockchains only support the type of currency they are built on — bitcoin for the bitcoin network and ether for the Ethereum network. Right now, there are few blockchains which support more than the currency the respective blockchain was built for. This results in people on these networks being limited to only being able to use their network’s respective token or cryptocurrency.
Here is a diagram of the architecture of the Catalyst Network DFS system:
The Catalyst Network differs from existing popular blockchain networks in that its consensus mechanism is based on a collaborative process of validation, as opposed to a competitive one.
This is possibly the most important feature of the Catalyst Network, as its design implies an enormous reduction in energy waste, as well as provides a more down-to-earth system of reward: Everyone who contributes gets a piece of the reward, rather than one “winner” taking all of the rewards, and all the work is done by everyone else being put to waste.
Consensus mechanisms and how the Catalyst Network is different is explained more fully in the third article.
Published at Mon, 29 Jul 2019 11:01:05 +0000
Bitcoin Pic Of The Moment
MySelfie-Edgelight-Gels
By bobbygiggz on 2019-03-16 06:52:59
