Why Proof-of-Time for a new consensus algorithm?
If you look at the blockchain market today, arguably, among hundreds of blockchains you won’t find a single comprehensive, applicable technology. It’s a controversial thing to say, but hear us out. Yes, there are networks with solid tokenomics models. There are blockchains that solve problems of early networks and there are some that boast solid developer toolsets.
But keep this in mind, blockchain first was set to become an inclusive permissionless and decentralized technology. And while it did achieve decentralization and permissionless, with the first — and perhaps the most important trait — inclusivity, it failed miserably.
Inhumane interfaces, slow processing times, and above all, bloated transaction fees are keeping millions from joining the blockchain ecosystem. With bitcoin still being number one in popularity, the network taking up some 60% of the market by capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap, most of us are stuck with one of the most expensive, slowest networks out there.
And wow, how expensive it is. According to YCharts data, at the time of writing the average transaction fee topped 58 US dollars.
Remember all that talk about blockchain being the solution for the 1.7 billion unbanked people? Those are the folks from developing countries who don’t have access to any form of banking infrastructure, most living in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.
How are these people going to afford to use blockchain? So, a technology for all? Apparently not. To build on top of that, the current motivation systems for network upkeep are deeply flawed. PoW networks are secure and reliable, but resource-intensive, expensive, and not scalable enough. PoS systems are scalable, but prone to security vulnerabilities and unfair, with the largest stake eventually hoarding most of the block generation volume.
Another fatal flaw of current systems is one that developers and business owners experience on themselves. As the price of assets rises, so does the translation cost, driving users away from decentralized applications and making them economically unavailable. Thus, many blockchain networks are not dependable and do not allow to plan long-term business strategies.
If we are to solve the problems of inclusivity and dependability, making blockchain a truly accessible technology, we must fix the issues of high cost and create an incentive model that promotes thoughtful and fair distribution of resources, where each user takes up exactly the amount of network power they really need.
This is exactly what Nimera Blockchain is trying to do and why we created proof-of-time. It’s an entirely new mechanism that uses charges and sets a number of network capacity that regenerates every 24 hours.
If you think about it, most of us only need a tiny percentage of network capacity. How many transactions do we perform everyday? Maybe we’ll buy groceries, maybe purchase a movie on a streaming service, pay for gas on the way from work. Perhaps buy the dip. That’s what, 4 transactions a day?
To increase the allowance for these four transactions, all one needs to do is hold NION — the native Nimera Blockchain currency — on the official wallet. A one-time investment that is fully reversible costing perhaps as little as a single transaction fee in Ethereum or Bitcoin is enough to cover a user for life. That’s right, for life! So a user stakes 50 — for the sake of an example — NION, getting 4 transactions — again, an example — every 24 hours. That’s the charge.
What about the odd day when that user needs to send some money to a friend and maybe pay for a subscription too? Transaction count is then totaling 6 rather than the usual 4. Well, there are options. A user can go into the negative balance on their charge. The next day they will have just 2 transactions, but all 4 will recharge the day after. Or they can buy more transactions from delegators in exchange for NION if they prefer having the charge intact.
And if somebody needs to take more network capacity, for example, a business owner developing their product on Nimera Blockchain? They simply hold as much NION as they need to cover the needs of their product. It’s that straightforward.
Distributing network capacity proportionally to the needs and contribution of participants, we believe that this novel approach will create a more inclusive and acceptable blockchain. What a more inclusive decentralized landscape will look like? Let’s find out together.
About Nimera Blockchain
Nimera Blockchain aims to create a more inclusive and accessible blockchain ecosystem, solving the most pressing issue of today’s blockchains — applicability. Our goal is to develop a blockchain system that is cheaper and easier to use for end-users, yet one that presents rich capabilities for developers and contributors.
