Blockchain That Spawns Sidechains

Blockchain Offspring – Sidechains - Will Improve Scalability!

UK blockchain-as-a-service firm Stratis has unveiled programmable sidechains as an alpha release.

A sidechain is a blockchain that's based on the core code of the main chain and is interoperable with it, but which allows for bespoke operations without affecting the main branch. This allows companies to experiment with creating blockchain applications without risk of adversely affecting the main chain or compromising privacy by making data public. At the same time, any updates to the main blockchain code are propagated down to the sidechains.

"Stratis sidechains have been designed so that in the future enterprises can run smart contracts on sidechains, opening up a wide range of use case such as exchanging documents between a range of companies within an industry, for example invoices or order forms," lead developer Jeremy Bokobza told Computing, adding that the sidechain can be customised by changing parameters like block interval and block size.

"One of the main advantages of sidechains are the ability to improve scalability for applications like payments and IoT, which could be hundreds of thousands of transactions."

The Stratis blockchain runs on the Microsoft .Net framework and is written in the familiar C# rather than using a specialist language and environment, a decision the company took to make creating decentralised applications and smart contracts more accessible to enterprise developers. It says it will soon provide support for Microsoft's functional programming language F# which is particularly popular in the financial sector, the main area of focus for the London-based firm.

Stratis is based on the Bitcoin blockchain but with the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism (essentially security through burning electricity) replaced by Proof-of-Stake (decision-making powers dished out according the stake - e.g. number of coins - held by each player) to increase scalability in the enterprise setting. It is designed to support smart contracts, enabling actions to be undertaken without human intervention once predefined conditions are met.

Among the use cases for the programmable blockchain, the company lists auctions, peer-to-peer lending, investment funds, insurance settlements, real estate transactions, domain name registries and digital copyright.

The sidechains will increase the flexibility of deploying smart contracts and decentralised applications, according to CEO Chris Trew.

"As an example, if an enterprise wants to improve efficiency by moving invoicing or asset tracking to a blockchain solution, it's likely that they will not want to publicise that data. That's when a private sidechain becomes a flexible solution that's quick to test and deploy, as well as easy to maintain," he said.

"Sidechains are a critical step in making blockchain accessible to enterprises wanting to benefit from blockchain while retaining full control of their business processes and privacy."