Introducing ODIN blockchain protocol

The main mission of GeoDB has always been democratizing and improving the big data market. Following our values, we are happy to announce a new product development wave within the GeoDB Foundation Ltd.

First of all, let us confirm that GeoDB, as a company, is not changing the initial plans. We keep working on generating massive valuable data from our users through proprietary and connected apps while offering this data to different sort of marketplaces and platforms, including our own ones.

And today we are happy to announce a big additional new branch of development within GeoDB which positions us among key innovation leaders of the blockchain industry. We are evolving from a semi-centralized business model platform to a truly decentralized blockchain protocol, meaning technical decentralization and high automation of shared processes and introducing Decentralized Autonomous Organization formed from our community and will be governing the network after it’s launch.

Please, meet ODIN — Open Data Interoperable Network. ODIN is a decentralized system designed to build a data oracle network, based on an open protocol for interaction between participants and a sustainable economy. Besides organizing the data oracle network, ODIN involves building a decentralized peer-to-peer data sharing and trading ecosystem. ODIN is a new system that combines the advantages of cryptography and decentralized technologies, as well as the simplicity of connecting data providers and the flexibility of developing contracts to receive and process data from them (to work with business requirements, which are to increase the scalability and reliability of circulating data).

ODIN’s basic architecture is inherited from the Band protocol and improved according to the specifics and needs for user-generated data scenarios and GeoDB community goals. The main point that ODIN aims to provide is to ensure decentralization. By decentralization, we mean several important aspects described below.

Permissionless.

The first is that anyone can become a data provider within the system boundaries. To do this, you do not need to have any permissions — initiate a transaction for creating a new data source, in which you determine how this source can be accessed. This feature allows you to switch from a model (for example), where only one exchange can provide the ratio of a pair of assets, to a model that allows you to have thousands of such data sources and allows the end-user to independently determine which sources will be used and in what quantity. The first step is to remove the threshold that determines who can be the data source.

Validation.

The second feature is that there is no single party that transfers data from all sources to the system. The information transfer process is also decentralized — many validators access data sources with the same requests and generate reports on the information received. Further, these reports are aggregated, and they are already the input for performing operations on the data. In this way, we remove a single vulnerable side who can transfer data to the system.

Open.

And the last feature is that anyone can suggest an algorithm (script) for how the received data will be processed. Thus, the end-user will have several possible scenarios for receiving and processing data, which can be performed jointly. The end-user independently chooses a scenario suitable for his case (price, the reputation of data sources, their number, etc., can play a role here).

Below is a high-level architecture of ODIN:

Let’s also go through the key components and features of ODIN:

New roles for our community

Now you can be not only a user of the system but also become one of the following contributors to the network and get rewarded for your contribution.

Validator — the maintainer of the ODIN system. The main functions of validators are the formation, proposal, verification and confirmation of blocks in the system. In other words, validators participate in reaching consensus on updating the state of the accounting system. An additional function of the validator is to receive data from external sources and generate reports.

Delegate — the participant who has revealed a desire to become a validator. Validators are delegates who have received the most votes (stake) from users.

Auditor — the participant who does not take part in reaching consensus in the system, but at the same time maintains a full node (a complete copy of the database) and checks all transactions and blocks according to the protocol rules.

Oracle scripts

Oracle scripts are a kind of contracts that are supported by the protocol. However, unlike the usual smart contracts, in which only interested parties participate, and the purpose is to allocate funds, Oracle scripts can be used by each participant in the system and determine the method of receiving and processing data from the relevant sources. Anyone from the system participants can create such a contract.

New Additional Governance Token — ODIN

ODIN will use ODIN native token for its own network which uses ODIN tokens as an incentive for validators to produce new blocks and submit responses to data requests. ODIN holders can use the tokens in the following ways:

• to pay for data received from the network;
• to use the tokens, they own to become validators;
• to delegate their tokens to a validator to earn a portion of the collected fees and inflationary rewards;
• To participate in network governance.

The total supply of ODIN is capped at 100 million tokens with the following distribution:

• Data consumers pool — 10%;
• Staking and validator’s rewards — 30%;
• Company & Founding team — 10%;
• ODIN Treasury — 50% (ODIN tokens allocated to ODIN Treasury are not taking part in System Governance).

All ODIN tokens will be issued with the genesis block and allocated to specific pools with further gradual distribution to validators and stakers over time.

Annual inflation rate for validators staking is set to around 12% APR.

Governance voting with ODIN tokens includes all major decisions regarding the functioning of the system:

• Fees and limits set by the protocol and system governance;
• Changes to system parameters and data oracles.

As for GEO — from now on it is not only the instrument to reward for the generated data, but also at the initial stages, it will work as the only way to obtain ODIN token.

Since ODIN launch, GEO to ODIN swap is available for GEO holders with 1 ODIN for 50 GEO ratio and 24 months vesting period. During this period staking to validator nodes only is available. After this period tokens are unlocked for 12 months evenly daily.

DPoS Consensus

ODIN protocol uses delegated proof of stake as a consensus reaching algorithm. This means that decisions about updating the state of the system can be applied by a limited number of validators chosen during the vote. Validators are selected by network members who own ODIN Tokens and can delegate them to one of the delegates.

Protocol Governance

The initial basic principles of the protocol functioning are described in this whitepaper and allow organizing a universal system (suitable for any future changes). After initialization, the system’s protocol can be changed by voting of the custodians of ODIN tokens.

Proposals for major and minor protocol upgrades can be made by any member who holds the ODIN tokens. To do this, she needs to send a transaction of the appropriate type, in which the update details are defined.

Treasury

ODIN Treasury is a key financial tool for managing projects and achieving its financial success via the community System Governance model. In the early stages of project implementation when Data oracles are not decentralized it is ODIN Treasury which collects payments from Data consumers for data obtained from ODIN projects own oracles.

Key ODIN Treasury functions:

• Selling ODIN token to the market participants (Data consumers, Stakers, Validators, Investors) and keeping received payments in the form of native crypto assets (BTC, ETH, DAI) and tokenized USD
• 80% of collected funds received from selling ODIN token to be used to buy out GEO token via auction mechanism every time as soon as 800 USD threshold is achieved, acquired GEO tokens will be allocated to recycling pool for future use as a means of payment to data providers
• 20% of collected funds are subject to invest in DeFi space with investment decisions offered and approved by System Governance

Development Roadmap

April 2021 — ODIN testnet v0.1

Demonstration of key providers and onboarding of test users

August 2021 — ODIN testnet v1.0

Live system, with the most important user, flows implemented, suitable for onboarding of beta-testers.

December 2021 — ODIN main net v1.0

Fully working system, with all user, flows implemented, suitable for onboarding of all users.

Future development

Although the ODIN protocol will be ready for use right after launch, we hope that development will not end at this point. Moreover, the protocol architecture provides for the possibility of adding the functionality of various levels of complexity.

We see the future extension as follows:

- cross integration to automatically stream data to other oracles, marketplaces and other data-consuming systems;

- extend types of supported data;

- introduce decentralized data storage and decentralized computation within the system.

You can find full information about ODIN including a detailed technical whitepaper and token economics paper on the website odinprotocol.io and follow the project’s updates on the social media channels:

Telegram — https://t.me/odinprotocol

Twitter — https://twitter.com/odinprotocol

Medium — https://medium.com/odinprotocol

Welcome to the future of true decentralized big data industry!