Technology
Concurrency inspired by STM
Inspired by the principles of software transactional memory (STM), Taraxa achieves node-level concurrency by speculative parallelization of transaction processing, with conflict minimization achieved from built-in concurrent data structures and node incentives.
Rapidly-finalized DAG
The block DAG is great for achieving horizontal concurrency, but it lacks true finality. True finality is especially important for smart contracts, most of which could incur cascading impact on the blockchain across numerous accounts. Taraxa introduces a VRF-powered PBFT process to achieve true finality – very quickly – so apps could make contract calls with peace of mind.
Fuzzy sharding
To maximize block utilization, the network automatically and with minimal overhead defines block proposal eligibility as well as jurisdictions for pending transactions for each full node via a process governed by cryptographic sortition. The process is “fuzzy” to minimize the need for real-time coordination with minimal waste.
Adaptive protocol
Network conditions are constantly changing, and the rules governing protocol behaviors should likewise adapt – automatically – not via online forums. Key protocol rules in Taraxa such as block generation rate, block size, and committee size are calculated and decided dynamically on the fly, minimizing the need for a hard forks (and flame wars).
Trustless light nodes
Most IoT edge devices are resource-constrained cannot run full nodes, but this does not mean they should become blind puppets of the full nodes they rely on. Taraxa has created a practical solution that enables light nodes to poll a random subset of the network to ascertain the veracity of what it’s been told.
Roadmap
Late 2017 / early 2018
Taraxa conceptualized.
2018-Q2/Q3
Kicked off preliminary research, tool writing, put together research team, first draft of whitepaper.
2018-Q4
Put together engineering team, further research, begin writing underlying blockchain framework.
2019-Q1
Core functionalities of the ledger completed and unit-tested.
2019-Q2
Developer testnet, block DAG / VRF-PBFT / VM integration, second draft of whitepaper.
2019-Q3
Public testnet, in-depth testnet profiling, developer SDKs, DApp from our partners, external security audits.
2019-Q4
Cryptoeconomic paper, node operator election.
2020
Main-net launch.