Synchronous and asynchronous blockchains ⚙️

To execute smart contracts, most blockchains use EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine), or try to be EVM-compatible — developers need less effort to adapt their product to their network.

EVM Scaling Limits

If smart contract A interacts with smart contract B, and that in turn with smart contract C, then all these three actions in the synchronous blockchain must be processed in one approach. What if hundreds or thousands of smart contracts interact simultaneously?

The inability to parallelize and distribute calculations can become an insurmountable problem when there are really a lot of users and transactions.

TVM Infinite Sharding

Everscale as a next-generation blockchain, has an asynchronous architecture (all contracts communicate with each other asynchronously). It is able to process almost any number of transactions per unit of time, because new shards (autonomous segments of the blockchain) are added to the network in proportion to the load on it.

The Everscale developers write smart contracts in Solidity, of course, adapted to TVM and asynchrony. The compiler has an excellent documentation and examples.

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CBDC 🔄

Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) is digital money issued by the government.

According to the research of Bank of America analysts CBDCs have the potential to revolutionize global financial systems and maybe the most significant technological advancement in the history of money.

Skepticism and fear remain in the crypto community that CBDC is the same centralized money, only in a different form, that it is a tool of totalitarian control through transactions, that their entry is associated with the pressure on crypto and that the crypto industry will suffer.

Sergey Shashev in an article on Entrepreneur notes that CBDC, by definition, is a legitimate digital means of payment, unlike, for example, stablecoins, and if they are created correctly, they will be able to optimize financial systems. Actual CBDC Agenda:

• what the legal framework should be
• how the linkage to banks should work
• how to move from stablecoin currencies to CBDCs
• how to integrate the technology into international trade
• how to incorporate CBDCs into "superapps"

In fact, CBDCs are digital versions of fiat currencies that are linked to the original currency in a ratio of 1 to 1. For example, when CBDC is issued in the USA, it will be a digital dollar equivalent to the fiat counterpart.

Everscale is creating technological solutions for launching CBDCs, stablecoins, and remittance services across the world.

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Stablecoins 💲

Stablecoin is a cryptocurrency with a stable price, ensured by a link to the price of another, more stable asset.

Stablecoins were created to solve the volatility problem associated with conventional cryptocurrencies, which can fluctuate significantly in price over a short period of time.

There are several types of stablecoins:

🟣Fiat (USDT, USDC, EURS) — link their price to a fiat currency that actually exists in the world economy, such as the US dollar. The ratio in this case will be 1:1.

🟣Crypto-secured (DAI) — secured by cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. They operate on the basis of a pledge mechanism, which allows their price to be stable.

🟣Hybrid (USDS) — use a combination of fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies to provide price stability. For example, such stablecoins can be backed 50% by US dollars and 50% by Bitcoins.

🟣Commodities (PAXG, XAUT) — backed by gold, silver, gas, oil and other traditional assets. Can change their value, as the prices of the mentioned commodities can also change. A company that issues such stablecoins must buy, for example, 1 gram of gold on the stock market for each issued token.

🟣Unsecured (BST, CUSD, ESD, FRAX) — may not be backed by fiat, cryptocurrencies or commodities. The issuer of such stablecoin constantly monitors that its price is generally kept around one U.S. dollar. If the token's price exceeds that level, the stablecoin issuer issues additional coins and then the bot sells them on the market, causing the price to drop. If a Stablecoin sags in price, the issuer begins to redeem that cryptocurrency from the market, leveling off its value.

The advantages of stablecoins include reliability, stability and predictability, making them more attractive to those looking for safe ways to store their savings. Stablecoins can also be used to transfer funds quickly and cheaply around the world, making them attractive for international transactions.

The disadvantages of stablecoins are the high degree of centralization, the increased attention of government agencies to this kind of asset, and the risk of being exposed to market fluctuations.

✔️ Overall, stablecoins are an important tool for those who want to take advantage of cryptocurrencies but do not want to face their volatility. However, it is important to remember that they are not a risk-free asset and users should always be careful and aware before using them.

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Scalability ↗️

Scalability is the ability of a system to evolve in accordance with growing demand. Blockchain scalability is the ability to increase the number of transactions processed per second.

We can mark the following types of blockchains scalability:

🛑Bitcoin scalability: solutions to increase Bitcoin throughput by increasing the block size or reducing the block interval without changes in the PoW consensus algorithm
🛑PoW scalability: solutions that achieve higher throughput by changing the algorithm
🛑Scalability of Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) algorithms: solutions based on BFT algorithms
🛑Scalable blockchains solutions

BFT is a family of consensus algorithms that can allow arbitrary behavior of untrusted nodes, which allows true nodes to reach consensus in untrusted networks.

Modern blockchain platforms are focused on solving the so-called blockchain trilemma — finding ways to increase scalability with a high level of decentralization and network security. This is achieved in different ways.

For example, SMFT is an original Everscale innovation that raises the bar to 50% fault tolerance (compared to the 33% of BFT consensus), which is the maximum security level by design in decentralized systems. At the same time, dynamic sharding used in Everscale allows to solve scalability problems without losing speed, while adjusting the load on the decentralized network.

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REMP 📄

REMP is a protocol under development, designed to provide more reliable delivery of external messages.

REMP solves several problems:

• Message tracing
• DDOS protection
• Replay protection

➕ For message tracing all messages in REMP go through full nodes, which check their validity and distribute them to the right validators. The validators compile a common queue of external messages and penalize those who insert messages out of order or too few, which is a potential defense against MEV attacks.

➕ For DDOS protection, REMP can only accept external messages from other validators or authorized nodes with a small stake. Ordinary users can send messages only through such nodes, which check the validity of the message and forward it to the validator. The message is considered valid for 2 minutes, after which it may become invalid.

➕ For replay protection, REMP proposes to add ID storage of all external messages by validators for 4-8 minutes and not to allow adding the same message twice during this time — unlike TON architecture, where contracts accept arbitrary external messages, and the contract itself must implement protection against replay.

Overall, the REMP protocol is an innovative solution that provides a high degree of data protection and privacy, using different levels of encryption and authentication.

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External and internal messages 🔍

In the scope of TVM asynchronous architecture, all interaction of contracts with each other is carried out via message sending.

How it works in Everscale

A contract receives an external message from the outside world. If the contract agrees to pay for it, a transaction is launched. As a result of it, the contract may create up to 255 of outcoming internal messages. This outcoming internal message has the address of the destination contract, the function to call in it, and what arguments to pass.

The destination contract receives an incoming internal message and launches a transaction, the result of which is again the creation of outcoming internal messages. if a contract does not agree to supply the gas to pay for the transaction, then the message will simply be discarded, and the transaction will not start.

All internal messages have to carry some amount of coins with them.

Parameters of internal message creation

When you create any internal message by calling the method of other contract or just send him money, you need to set up three parameters:

address.transfer (uint128 value, bool bounce, uint16 flag)

value — the amount of EVER you want to attach to the message.

bounce — Boolean flag that indicates whether we need to try to create a return message should an error occurs during the processing of the message or there is no contract deployed on the destination address. True — send all remaining value back with a note that an error occurred. False — all EVERs will just remain in the destination contract.

flag — special flag for a finer work with the amount of value to add to the outcoming message. It allows to attach to the message exactly the amount of EVERs that remained in the incoming message minus all the spent gas. You can send with the outcoming message all the EVERs left on the contract balance minus those sent in the previous messages.

🔗 Find out more about Everscale architecture in the Everscale Crash Course

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Soft Majority Fault Tolerance (SMFT) 📝

Wishing to improve the security of the Everscale network, while keeping it fast and decentralized enough, Mitya Goroshevsky described the SMFT consensus protocol, his vision of solving several problems of the original Nikolai Durov protocol.

The problems SMFT is trying to solve:

🔴Security of block generation in tracks and finality: validators can release an incorrect block if 2/3+1 of them conspire

🔴Fixing screwed up state: Nikolai Durov suggested using vertical blocks to fix contracts, but their implementation is complicated and requires changes not only in node software, but in other parts of the network as well

🔴Problems in DeFi: lack of finality can cause problems for many DeFi services, such as bridges, and fixing through vertical blocks will no longer be possible

How SMFT solves these problems with verifiers:

🟢Blocks must collect 50% + 1 BLS signatures of the entire workchain to be included in the master, which guarantees their availability

🟢Verifiers verify blocks and send ACK or NACK to the masterchain

🟢In case of NACK, the block is checked by the whole masterchain, and invalid blocks lead to a slash of validators who signed it, sent an ACK, or went silent

🟢Every N blocks, validators must reveal their keys to determine which blocks they should have checked

🟢If a block takes a long time to verify, the verifiers send a timeout, and if several timeouts are set, the block is verified by the masterchain. This allows you to determine the required number of verifiers for each block and eliminate the chance of an attack

🟢SMFT also offers simplification of BFT in a validation session or abandonment of it in favor of selecting a random block maker verified by verifiers to speed up block release

Overall, SMFT is an Everscale innovation that raises the fault tolerance bar to 50% (vs. 33% consensus BFT), which is the maximum level of security in decentralized systems.

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Workchains ↔️

The Everscale blockchain is based on the masterchain — the main chain of blocks that is responsible for enforcing network rules. All information about transactoins is stored within it. The masterchain ensures security for all workchains connected to it.

Workchains are blockchains that can, on one hand, operate independently and have their own virtual machine, transaction structure, or blocks, as well as their own token. On the other hand, they have the interoperability feature, which allows for the transfer of assets between workchains. This allows for widespread use of blockchain in areas such as DeFi, NFT, and GameFi.

In fact, workchains act as "workhorses" in the network, "pulling" the load by conducting transactions. Each workchain can accommodate up to 256 shards (streams) working in parallel with full synchronization, which allows for processing a large number of transactions simultaneously.

The Everscale blockchain currently consists of two networks: the masterchain and the base chain. The base chain is a workchain for end-users that supports dApps and serves as a platform for executing smart contracts.

In Everscale, in addition to the usual data processing workchains, there is a type of network called drivechain. At its core, the drivechain is a workflow optimized for storing large amounts of data.

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Masterchain 🔗

To achieve the huge capacity that is one of the benefits of the Everscale network, a blockchain consists of a masterchain and a multitude of shards called workchains.

▶️Workchains are the blockchains that contain the majority of user transactions and data. We wrote more about workchains here.

▶️Masterchain is the main blockchain, which is responsible for enforcing the rules of the entire network. It contains the main network configuration parameters, blockchain validation information and a set of hashes of the latest workchain blocks.

❗️The masterchain contains all the block proofs from all the workchains, so the security of the entire network depends on it, similar to what is implemented in Polkadot and Ethereum 2.0.

All of the network's workchains use the masterchain as a way of synchronization and the only source of truth.

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Blockchain trilemma 🗂

The blockchain trilemma is about that in terms of decentralization, security, and scalability, decentralized networks can only provide two out of three properties simultaneously.

The term was popularized by co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin.

🙋 The structure of the blockchain implies decentralization, means that there is no single person or organization controlling its operation.

🪟 The ability of the blockchain to increase the number of processed transactions per second is its scalability.

❗️ The blickchain's decentralization level will not matter if it doesn't guarantee security to its users.

In distributed systems, participants must verify the data authenticity, which can slow down transaction processing. So increasing scalability usually weakens decentralization or security.

Developers strive to solve this problem by proposing various consensus mechanisms and scaling solutions, such as dynamic sharding in Everscale.

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👁 Types of Blockchains

Blockchain is a decentralized, uneditable database stored on multiple computers that provides data security and transparency by using cryptography and consensus algorithms.

The main types of blockchains are:

▶️Public [Everscale, Bitcoin, Ethereum]: available to all participants without restriction. Anyone can join the network, participate in the consensus process and view all data and transactions in the blockchain.

➕ Pros: decentralization, transparency, security, network effectivity

➖ Cons: scalability, privacy, decision complexity

▶️Private [Hyperledger]: restricted to certain members or a group of organizations. Access can only be allowed by invitation or using permissions. Typically used in corporate sectors and can have higher bandwidth and confidentiality.

➕ Pros: confidentiality, scalability, management and control, fast transaction verification

➖ Cons: limited trust, vulnerability to manipulation, infrastructure costs, limited network effectivity

Blockchains that are a combination of public and private:

🔵Consortial [R3 Corda, Global Shipping Business Network]: have different consensus models and are typically used in business areas where participants interact based on trust. In this approach, multiple participants agree on blockchain management and key decision-making.

🔵Hybrid [Venom, XinFin, IBM Hybrid Blockchain]: allow participants to keep some data private while keeping other aspects open and transparent. Can be useful in a variety of scenarios where a balance between privacy and openness is required.

➕ Pros: privacy, performance, trust, scalability, flexibility and control

➖ Cons: limited decentralization and network efficiency

❗️Before choosing a blockchain, it is important to analyze the requirements and goals of the project. The most appropriate type of blockchain will depend on the specific use case.

It is also worth considering that blockchain is a technology that is still evolving, which lays the potential for new hybrid solutions that combine the advantages of different blockchain types.

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Crypto Wallets 📦

A cryptowallet is one of the tools for handling your digital assets.

Cryptowallets can be "hot" or "cold" depending on the mechanism.

Using "hot" wallet you store the assets on the network: on various exchanges, via special extensions, and mobile apps.

With a "cold" wallet, your assets are stored directly on a HDD or removable device.

Software wallets

Wallets work as programs that are downloaded onto your device, but all transactions are carried out remotely. After installing one of these programs, you create your wallet and remember the seed phrase yourself.

The most popular software wallets are: MetaMask, Trust Wallet, in the Everscale ecosystem: EVER Wallet, Surf.

The downsides of these types of wallets are in user inattention.

Hardware wallets

Hardware wallets are rightfully considered the most reliable because malicious actors have practically no chance of accessing them, and even if they find it, the transaction can only be confirmed manually.

The most popular hardware wallets are: Ledger, Trezor.

The downside is the high cost.

Wallets created on crypto exchanges and in crypto bots are also "hot," with your funds not under your full control but managed by a custodian. They are also called "custodial" wallets. It is not recommended to store large sums in such wallets.

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DeBots in Everscale ↗️

DeBots (decentralized bots) are special chatbots that help users interact with the blockchain and implement useful functions such as staking.

DeBots are smart contracts that facilitate conversational flow communication with a target smart contracts. In Everscale they are executed not on the blockchain but on the user's device. Therefore, a special application called a DeBot browser is required to launch them.

The Surf browser is a popular browser for DeBots in Everscale. It allows users to launch any DeBot and interact with the blockchain directly, without the need for any external apps.

How to use a DeBot in Surf?
In the Surf app, go to the DeBots section by clicking on the icon with four circles. In the "Find DeBot" field, enter the address of the needed DeBot – Surf will display it below this field.

🔗 Find out more here

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Multisignature 👥

Multisigature is a special type of crypto wallet, using which a transaction will take place only if two or more signatures are entered.

Multisignature is like a multi-key deposit box, but on the blockchain. You decide how many private keys you need to sign the transaction. A common variant is the multisig “any two of the three keys".

Mechanics

One of the key holders enters the details of the transaction and his key to sign it. However, the transaction has not been completed yet. It will be in a waiting state until all the necessary keys sign the transaction.

Multisignature is convenient to use when funds are managed by several people: family, business, community, and also, for your personal wallet, as a protection against cyber attacks.

Multisignature in Everscale

The Broxus team has integrated the multisigature feature into EVER Wallet — the user can choose the appropriate type of wallet.

The EverX team has created a DeBot that can be used to implement multiple signatures in Ever Surf.

The multisignature feature is also available in Everspace wallet.

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Threaded Virtual Machine (TVM) 💻

Threaded Virtual Machine is a type of virtual machine specifically optimized for parallel processing of threaded computations.

In the blockchain, TVM is used to execute smart contract code in the Masterchain and the Workchain Zero. It is currently involved in the Everscale, Venom, TON and GOSH blockchains.

By design, TVM has an asynchronous model of interaction between accounts. Each account can only affect the state of another account by sending a message. This allows multiple smart contracts to be processed simultaneously.

This processing approach results in a significant performance increase over traditional virtual machines.

Here are some of the benefits of using TVM:

⏺Security
⏺Scalability
⏺High performance
⏺Support for different programming languages

💡 Note that TVM works not only with 256-bit integers, but actually with (almost) arbitrary records and structures, making it more suitable for executing code written in high-level languages.

🔗 More details about the principles of TVM can be found in Nikolai Durov's whitepaper, and you can read some of the instructions and fixes applied to Everscale here.

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Cryptocurrency token standards 💳

Token standards are sets of rules and agreements that govern tokens. They define the basic properties and functions of a token and are the foundation of the blockchain ecosystem.

One of the most popular token standards is ERC-20, introduced as part of the Ethereum Request for Comment in 2015. There are now more than 200 ERCs.

According to the official Ethereum website, some of the most popular ERCs include:

🔵ERC-20 — a standard for fungible (interchangeable) tokens, which makes them ideal for representing virtual currency, voting or staking tokens

🔵ERC-223 — offers additional security measures, allowing tokens unacceptable for a smart contract to be returned back to the sender

🔵ERC-721 — a standard for NFTs, meaning that each token is unique. Used to represent artwork, collectibles, or in-game items

🔵ERC-1155 — a multi-token standard that allows for the creation of various types of digital assets, including utility tokens such as BNB and NFTs

🔵ERC-4626 — a tokenized storage standard designed to optimize and unify their technical parameters

🔵ERC-6551 — a standard that allows you to turn any of your NFTs into a cryptocurrency wallet

🔵ERC-7210 — provides standardization and interoperability between different NFT platforms and networks

In the Everscale network, the interoperable token standard is called TIP-3 (Threaded Improvement Proposal #3).

It describes the basic principles of smart token contracts and supports the circulation of wrapped tokens EVER - WEVER for DEX and Bridge operations.

The TIP-4 standard has been developed for NFT, which also implements Everscale multithreading capabilities with a similar architecture to TIP-3.

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Asynchrony in TVM blockchains 📊

TVM architecture allows you to design a blockchain so that the update of the blockchain state occurs within the asynchronous paradigm. Asynchrony is one of the key factors in achieving high scalability of the blockchain.

Unlike blockchains based on EVM the TVM allows for asynchronous updates of smart contract states. Each time a smart contract code is executed, a transaction is generated and validated by a blockchain node responsible for validating transactions from smart contracts within its thread.

Smart contracts are combined into a shard, for the validation of transactions from which one group of node validators is responsible. With an increasing load, a shard (a set of smart contracts) is divided into several shards, each one receives its own group of validators. At the same time, smart contracts from different shards can still exchange messages.

Thus, one user action can be processed asynchronously by two or more nodes.

🔗 Read more about asynchronous execution of the smart contracts on TVM.

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Bridges in blockchain: what are they for? ✉️

A blockchain bridge is a protocol that connects two blockchains and allows interoperability between them.

Bridges are the backbone of interoperability in the blockchain industry, allowing isolated ecosystems to come together and create an interconnected network of blockchains with seamless exchange of tokens and data.

▶️Bridges can have different uses:

🔵calling smart contracts
🔵receiving information from oracles
🔵token transfer between two networks

To transfer a token using a bridge, a «wrapped» token is used — a copy of the crypto-asset that exists in another blockchain, but is tied to the value of the token originally sent.

▶️Types of bridges:

1. Custodial — security is provided by a central management body (e.g., an exchange).

2. Non-castodial — work decentralized and manage the processes of blockchain and cryptocurrency mining using smart contracts, and therefore do not require the services of a bridge operator. In this case, the security of the system depends entirely on its code.

One-way bridges only transfer assets to the destination blockchain, not back. Two-way bridges work in both directions.

▶️Pros of bridges:

🔵Load balancing and scaling
🔵Expansion of available assets
🔵Integration between blockchains

▶️Cons of bridges:

🔵Development complexity
🔵Possibility of centralization
🔵Risks of vulnerability from attacks on the network or contract

Bridges take blockchain interactions to the next level, enabling a more flexible, scalable and interoperable future. However, it's worth remembering that they still come with risks and need to evolve.

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Decentralized Apps🪟

Decentralized applications (dApps) are applications running on blockchain networks. dApps are as diverse as conventional centralized applications, and represent social networks, games, entertainment, as well as tools for accessing decentralized financial services (wallets, DEXes, bridges), etc.

dApps are characterized by

➕Open source code
➕Cryptographic protection
➕Tokenized system

You need a compatible wallet, for example, EVER Wallet (Everscale network) or MetaMask (EVM network) to interact with the dApp.

How dApp works

Unlike centralized applications that store data in one place, the blockchain network stores copies of its expanding data stack on a large number of nodes — the computers which are belong to the users, not to the dApp creators.

Advantages of dApps

dApps are free from the control and interference of a single authority. Protecting user privacy. No censorship and flexible development. Resistance to attacks.

dApps are still in the early stages, and they have to solve the problems of scalability, code modification and quite small user base.

Today there are more than 50 dApps running in the Everscale ecosystem, and more than 550 dApps running in the TON ecosystem.

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Zero-knowledge Proof protocols 🛡

Zero-knowledge proof is a technique that allows you to check the accuracy of a statement without revealing any additional information about the statement itself.

We can distinguish two main zero-knowledge protocols that are most commonly used:

1️⃣ zk-SNARK — a zero-knowledge succinct non-Interactive argument of knowledge. The proving party can prove possession of information using a secret key without interacting with the verifying party in any way. The secret key is destroyed immediately after trusted installation.

2️⃣ zk-STARK — a zero-knowledge scalable transparent argument of knowledge. Unlike ZK-SNARK, it is faster, does not require trusted installation, and the randomness used is public information.

Pros:
🔵Increase privacy
🔵Increase info-security
🔵Increase blockchain scalability

Cons:
🔵Vulnerability to quantum computing
🔵Requires significant computing power
🔵Likelihood of compromise in a trusted installation

Usage Examples:

➖ ZCash uses a modified zk-SNARK protocol to increase the privacy of user transactions. The same protocol was partially implemented in Ethereum as part of the Byzantium hardfork.

➖ Resistance and StarkWare are developing solutions for decentralized exchanges based on zk-STARK. The Polygon virtual machine (Miden VM) is also based on the zk-STARK protocol.

Despite its drawbacks, zero-knowledge proofs are becoming increasingly popular due to their unique privacy preserving features and scaling potential.

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