In 2021, Idena has grown three times reaching 14K+ validated identities. Today it is one of the most decentralized blockchains with more than 1.7K validators. No PoW or PoS blockchain can be supported by so many independent validators all having equal voting power because any public blockchain with PoW or PoS consensus will inevitably face extreme stake disproportionality, censorship, and concentration of governance in the hands of few powerful actors.
We believe that every human voice matters. Оur goal is to make it possible for everyone to become a miner and to run a node even with no experience in cryptocurrency. We strive to make Idena the most democratic and scalable blockchain with the most accessible mining.
That is why in 2021 we have focused on the growth of the network, easier onboarding, and the security of the network. To achieve that, we have implemented a number of important solutions — both planned for 2021, and also some that were not scheduled:
- Adaptive UI for the Web App;
- Shared nodes marketplace;
- Training validation;
- Flip reporting rewards;
- Idena telegram bot.
In this roadmap update, some milestones originally planned for 2021 have been shifted to 2022. The updated roadmap shows that we have not deviated from our initial path. We have only moved some milestones further along the timeline to deliver more feasible features in due time.
In 2022, we want to improve network scaling and move on with sharding, grow the Idena ecosystem with smart contracts and dApps, and adopt more use cases and integrations such as identity bridging, attention economy, and publication platform. We have built a solid foundation, now it’s time to build on top.
Exchange listing
We understand the importance of promoting Idena on new platforms and reaching new investor audiences. Through 2021, we were looking for feasible exchange listings for iDNA and considering different options. As a part of this process, we have published a poll to understand which exchange was the most preferable for the Idena community among the options that we had at that moment.
Presently, we are in the final stage of negotiating a listing of iDNA on a tier-2 exchange we consider optimal (iDNA/USDT pair is considered). As soon as the listing timeline is agreed upon and confirmed, we will share the details in a dedicated announcement.
Identity bridge to Ethereum, BSC, and other blockchains
Transferring the ledger of the validated addresses to other blockchains is an important feature because, in Idena, identity validation guarantees three important qualities of the owner:
- Uniqueness: a single person can not validate many identities;
- Humanness: the identity can not be validated by a bot;
- Anonymity: the owner of the identity remains fully anonymous.
This simultaneous combination of qualities is essential for airdrops, IDOs, voting, and many other cases where uniqueness and anonymity are equally important.
Idena Authorisation already works as a centralized identity solution (e.g for Gitcoin quadratic funding).
Two years ago we launched a hackathon to develop a decentralized Ethereum relay. The solution was developed, but it is not feasible because of high gas amounts necessary to transfer the list of validated addresses.
Now Idena has a new decentralized solution for integrating identity validation status into Ethereum, BSC, or any other blockchain with smart contracts — Idena Identity Bridge.
To make a snapshot of the validation state of all identities on the Idena blockchain, they are hashed to a Merkle tree. The resulting hash can be recorded, for instance, to an Ethereum smart contract. Then the contract can check the state of any identity for a number of cases:
- to make an airdrop;
- to offer a slot in an IDO;
- to vote for a governance proposal;
- to participate in an oracle;
- for quadratic funding.
Idena ad network
Advertisement is the fuel that powers the Internet. But there is a big problem with the business model of all digital ad networks: they monopolize the market and feed on the personal information collected about the user. Every digital trace of every person is recorded and stored to manipulate their minds.
With more digitalization because of the pandemic, we start spending even more time online and share even more data about what we do and who we are. The more fake information is being fed to us, the more vulnerable we become to manipulation and brainwashing. And marketing technologies make it hard for the majority to unplug from that information stream.
Idena turns the concept of targeting upside down, giving the user control over the information they consume. In this model, a transparent advertiser discloses information about their target audience, and then the user can decide which content suits them at the moment, without revealing their personal data. So it is the user, not intermediaries such as search engines or social media platforms who have the right to choose what fits best.
While in digital media it is the intermediaries who benefit from ads delivery, on-chain advertising leads to a model without intermediaries, in which the advertiser pays directly to the protocol, burning coins purchased on the market and thus distributing profits to all the network participants.
Smart contracts
The major limiting factor for the growth and adoption of the existing smart contract and dApp ecosystem is transaction and execution price. When the scalability of the underlying blockchain is limited and the demand for smart contract execution is high, the fee for running a smart contract inevitably goes up, driven by the laws of the market and the mechanics of the blockchain.
Proof-of-person consensus combined with sharding makes Idena effectively scalable and offers a solution to the blockchain scalability trilemma. A highly scalable blockchain like Idena can potentially offer much lower fees and make smart contracts more accessible. When the scalability problem is out of the way, smart contract execution can be reasonably priced, even when challenged by traffic-demanding dApp classes, such as DeFi or GameFi. And because in Idena every user can be a miner and earn mining rewards, Idena smart contracts will be accessible to anyone.
Sharding offers another advantage for smart contract execution. In a sharded network, each shard can independently execute its own smart contract. So, the number of smart contracts that can be executed in parallel, grows with the number of shards in the network. When the network grows, so does the number of shards and smart contract computing capacity.
Another limitation for smart contract applications is the connection with the outside world. Idena smart contracts can use Idena human-driven oracles to provide data while preventing collusion and Sybil attacks. A good example is the refundable oracle lock atomic smart contract that has been already used in the Idena community for funding community projects.
Flip AI resistance
AI resistance of flips is the cornerstone of the Idena security system. To ensure the quality of flips in a decentralized manner, we want to stimulate network participants to make AI-resistant flips by introducing the flip scoring system. The score measures how difficult the flip is for AI. The reward for creating a complex flip increases with its score. Some possible ways to increase the score are:
- collages;
- hand drawing in flips;
- complex word combinations for creating unconventional flip stories.
To algorithmically improve AI resistance of flips, we’ve been recently working on constructing adversarial noise for images. There are many published papers about adversarial attacks on neural networks. But most of these attacks do not work on such a powerful commercial computer vision API like Google Vision.
We have made some progress on constructing effective noise that attacks computer vision in many cases. You can read about it in Idena Chronicles #82. The noise can be now added to the images with a stand-alone tool. Later we plan to add this tool to the Idena client to make it a part of the flip creation process.
Sharding 1.5
Sharding 1.5 is an intermediate milestone between the current system with one single blockchain and with one common state for all validators and the fully sharded system with multiple blockchains (shard-chains) and with segregated state. Sharding 1.5 divides transaction validation between the shards. There is still one blockchain and one state for all nodes. But the mempool for every shard is different, and the transaction goes only to the mempool of the corresponding shard. To guarantee tx validation, the next block proposer will be selected from another shard, so all shards are round-robined and have their turn for validation.
In Sharding 2.0 the state will be fully divided between the shards, and the transactions will be validated simultaneously in all shards.
Content publishing
The Idena network can be used as decentralized IPFS storage for publications with consensus-based editorial to build censorship-free publishing platforms, which are protected from bots manipulating content discovery. Content can be discovered and promoted via Idena Advertisement network. Although Idena publication platform is censorship-free, it still offers a variety of mechanics for consensus-based content moderation: unwanted, illegal, and offensive content can be filtered by decentralized oracle censorship and disincentivized by the attention economy market laws.
Community development
We see the main focus of the Idena core team in building the protocol — the foundation for the Idena ecosystem. And the results that we have achieved prove that this foundation is solid, strong, and scalable:
- 1.7K validators;
- 12K+ active miners;
- 14K+ users exchanging transactions simultaneously during the validation ceremony.
The next step towards a healthy ecosystem is to offer good tools to build on top of that foundation. That is why we are now actively working on Idena smart contracts that will be highly available and easily adaptable to different systems and development stacks. With Idena smart contracts in place, we foresee a plethora of ambitious projects in the Idena ecosystem that can be brought to life by the joint forces of the Idena developers community:
- wrapped and algorithmic stable coins;
- oracle-driven prediction markets;
- private loans collateralized by the identity reputation;
- micromixers for non-traceable transactions that guarantee personal privacy;
- oracle-driven escrow;
- decentralized exchange implementations;
- Idena launchpad driven by the attention economy;
- Idena DAO.
Decentralized Internet
Imagine decentralized Internet based on collaboration and crowdsourcing with services governed on democratic principles: mail, DNS, social media, advertisement, games, content storage — everything. On this Internet, personal data is neither collected nor monetized. The key role is given to people, not corporations.
However, decentralized services are based on cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are their lifeblood. The future landscape of the decentralized ecosystem is determined by how the cryptocurrencies are governed, minted, and circulated. As PoW and PoS cryptocurrencies are based on money, they lead to more centralization. We can not change it.
But we can build Proof-Of-Person cryptocurrency to fight back against centralization. Together we are developing a human-centric ecosystem that everyone can join and where every voice matters. There is still a lot of work to be done. We appreciate your support. Thank you for joining Idena and taking this exciting journey with us.
