Former Amazon and Google Developers are Building a Fast, Highly Scalable Blockchain

Since Blockchain’s debut in 2009 it has faced a broad band of criticism from both supporters and those outside the cryptocurrency community. Scalability and governance disputes, however, continue to be hot topics within the blockchain technology space. Some also argue that these kinks that need to be worked out are partially responsible for what is keeping blockchain from breaking into the mainstream market.

Scalability refers to the blockchain’s ability to grow. With a maximum block size of 1MB, the Bitcoin Blockchain, for example, doesn’t have the capacity to hold or process the mass amounts of data required to bring blockchain technology into the mainstream market. In order for blockchain technology to be useable for the masses it needs to increase its capacity and transaction speed.

Cypherium, a team of talented developers with backgrounds at Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, is accomplishing this through a few different technological advances. The first of which is by combining two consensus mechanisms. Cypherium is interweaving the strengths from Proof-of-Work and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus mechanisms to build a hybrid blockchain.

By leveraging PoW’s efficiency with PBFT’s reliability, the result is a blockchain that is as functional as the Bitcoin Blockchain, but with the scalability of a PBFT-based blockchain. This blockchain will theoretically be able to process thousands of transactions per second, unlike any other currently existing blockchain available.

The second part of Cypherium’s solution to scalability and governance disputes is their multi-level governance. This separates the application protocol from the main protocol. By separating the two, it allows the main protocol to operate without getting congested by information in the application protocol; thus, increasing speed.

The test sandbox powers up smart contracts to run on a temporary mini-fork until debugging is finished. The result is then reported to the main protocol. The mini-fork is deleted and operations continue as normal. As a truly decentralized blockchain, Cypherium’s protocol can be changed by a two-thirds vote. Adjustments can be made to the block size, transaction fee and stack depth just to name a few.

The increased transaction throughput and larger block sizes partially permit lower transaction fees. With transaction fees on the Bitcoin blockchain as high as $7 at the time of writing, it’s simply not conducive to use cryptocurrency for small daily purchases. Cypherium is producing the technology needed to not only introduce the non-tech community to cryptocurrency, but to make it a usable commodity on a daily basis.

While there are other companies in the space addressing scalability concerns, most options being presented rely on more centralized methods. And as we all know, the idea behind blockchain technology is de-centralization. Cypherium’s consensus mechanism provides the transaction speed required by increasing popularity coupled with the decentralization needed to provide a blockchain that stays committed to the integrity of the chain.

Cypherium’s team of developers are setting out to develop a blockchain that is scalable and adaptable for everyday life. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens.