ORBS — Improving Ethereum
I first encountered ORBS at the Japan Blockchain Conference, where they presented together with many of their partners, such as PumaPay and Endor. ORBS aims to differentiate itself by not providing standalone blockchain technology, but rather a virtual chain overlay for Ethereum with its own ecosystem for creating distributed applications (dapps), in particular consumer apps.
From the perspective of consumer apps, Ethereum and its smart contract technology suffer from unpredictable fees and somewhat variable execution times. While conceptually, cryptocurrencies are ideal for consumer application ecosystems due to their borderless nature, the ability to transact in small fractions and the avoidance of bank accounts (in particular where Generation Z consumers are involved), these two aforementioned challenges make Ethereum difficult to use for micro-transactions. ORBS aims to provide a solution.
ORBS is a virtual blockchain that is overlaid onto Ethereum. The well-known blockchain trilemma postulates that blockchains can only meet two out of the three criteria of Decentralization, Scalability and Security. The question of fewer or more nodes that alter the speed that transactions can be executed at, no longer has to be a compromise with ORBS. ORBS creates a large number of virtual nodes (about 1,000), of which only 21 (similar to EOS) are randomly selected for each transaction to provide the security of 1000 nodes with the speed of 21. Transactions will be completed faster, and lower the transaction costs of Ethereum substantially to where it is economically viable for businesses to perform micro-transaction on the blockchain.
ORBS shows that existing blockchains do not need to remain static. For Ethereum, this is good news because it provides the possibility of bridging gaps in technology that could arise as new ecosystems are released. ORBS also takes an interesting position in that they are not trying to “win” at the blockchain game. Instead their philosophy is to solve for a single need instead of attempting to be a “silver bullet”. I think this level of modesty is a welcoming sign for a blockchain project.
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