Comparing Distributed Ledgers by Game of Thrones use case — 0bsNetwork
This is the sixth part of our series “Comparing Distributed Ledgers by Game of Thrones Use Case”. To find out more about the series and the other articles of it, check out our intro article!
This time we take a look at 0bsNetwork.
If you’re not sure what the name indicates, let me enlighten you:
it stands for “Zero Bullshit Network” — Nice! What is behind such an awesome name?
0bsNetwork states that it’s the
“blockchain for the real world”.
It is a fork of
“the Waves platform, which itself is based on NXT, Scorex and Bitcoin-NG”.
We got to talk with the team at the OEBB (austrian railways) hackathon in Vienna which was powered by 0bsNetwork. They told us that the difference to Waves is that the vision and final goal of 0bsNetwork is different. 0bsNetwork focuses on real world business applications, while the Waves community is more about moon culture.
However, on the surface Waves and 0bsNetwork look quite similar. It is a blockchain that is really easy to use, and we had a good time implementing our game of thrones use case.
Technical overview
0bsNetwork is a blockchain that uses a masternode architecture, facilitating a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. To run a node, an account needs to hold at least 1000 Zbs coins (Zero Bullshit Coins), the custom currency of 0bsNetwork. This currency is needed to issue transactions, as the fees are paid in Zbs coins.
On the surface, the creation of blocks happens in the classic blockchain fashion. First collecting transactions from the mempool, then grouping them to blocks and distributing them in the network.
0bsNetwork enables to write and use smart contracts using the custom functional programming language RIDE.
What is special, is that the contract doesn’t exist alone, but accounts and assets are “smart”. This happens by adding a RIDE script to the asset or account. Each time the account interacts with the network or the asset is used, the rules in the attached script get executed. That way, it’s easy to implement custom behaviour like a multisignature account, or an asset that e.g. can only be sent to specific addresses in a specific time frame.
Some behaviour that is often needed in blockchain applications is available as transaction types. Examples are the creation of a token, or the transfer of tokens to multiple receivers at once.
Already included is also a decentralized exchange for 0bs tokens.
Implementation
To see the source code of our implementation, head over to our GitHub.
Disclaimer: Our research was done in June 2019.
As we already implemented a use case at the hackathon in Vienna, we already had knowledge about 0bsNetwork. But even without any prior knowledge, interacting with 0bsNetwork is very easy and developer friendly. At the hackathon we used their python sdk, for this game of thrones use case we used the javascript sdk.
As we forgot about some aspect of the blockchain, we asked in the telegram chat and got an immediate answer. What we did, was simply issuing data transactions to the network. Their API makes it easy to query transactions that are recorded on the network. To get the current state of our alliances led by Khaleesi and Cercei, we just queried all transactions with the key “Khalessi” or “Cercei”, and checked what the content of the most recent transaction is.
All in all, 0bsNetwork is really a joy to develop with, because everything is understood easily, coded fast and working. However, on the explorer you can see that there are almost no transactions issued on mainnet and testnet (as of June 2019). Compare that to Waves, where each block contains 10 to 100 transactions. The problem with 0bsNetwork definitely lies in the lack of usage of the network.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Easy to code
- Fast
- Cheap
- Can create tokens via Web-GUI
- Smart assets and smart accounts
- Mass transfer of tokens
Cons:
- New syntax of RIDE language that’s used for the smart assets and accounts
Special thanks to @skVie and @JustJamesDev in the 0bsNetwork telegram chat for answering us so fast!
Block42 is a blockchain solution provider developing applications on top of most recognized blockchain frameworks like Ethereum, Hyperledger, 0bsNetwork and many more.
