TrustNote2 Quick Look: TrustME-Hybrid Consensus Mechanism

TrustNote is evolving, and so is its consensus mechanism. In today’s TrustNote2 quick look series, let’s look at one of the core disruption aspects of TrustNote2's technology: the TrustME-Hybrid consensus mechanism. This evolution brings together proof-of-work(PoW), proof-of-stake(PoS), and Byzantine agreements.

In the TrustME-Hybrid consensus mechanism, a total of 10 attestor seats are reserved for nodes to win according to the amount of effort they commit (PoW). Initially, 10 attestors were designated in the genesis unit, and immediately after the creation of the genesis unit, the election of next round of 10 attestors starts. Once the next round of 10 attestors are all elected, the attestation authority will be unconditionally handed over, and a new round of election will start in turn. By automatically adjusting the PoW difficulty, the switching time for each round is limited to roughly two and half minutes. The nodes participating the election can reduce their own mining difficulty and increase the success rate of the election campaign by staking an amount of TTT tokens.

Building upon Tendermint based Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT), attestors will produce TrustME units which contain the election results under Byzantine agreement. TrustME units are designed to be stable units. Any units which reference to TrustME units, either directly or indirectly, are also stable.

In a TrustNote-based ledger system, TrustME units connect to one other and form into a very special line, the so-called main chain. According to the position of the TrustME unit on the main chain, the sequence of each TrustME unit can be determined unambiguously. Consequently, the sequence of other units in the ledger can also be determined. This sequencing of the units provides the basis with which to deal with double-spending.

In summary, the TrustME-Hybrid consensus mechanism has the following characteristics:

• Separating attestation from writing into the ledger makes it even more fair and secure than before;
• The algorithm is simplified, taking less time for transaction units to become stable, which in turn improves overall performance;
• All input variables needed to reach consensus come from the ledger itself, no external dependencies are required;
• More nodes (of different capabilities) are now permitted to participate and benefit from the mining process.

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