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PARAMETA’s Blockchain Core Underlying Technology, loopchain
2023.04.19
Greetings from the PARAMETA Team,
PARAMETA provides blockchain full-stack technologies and consulting for building platforms, from mainnet construction and design to token economy, all of which are underpinned by PARAMETA’s solid blockchain core underlying technology. In addition to the stable and reliable distributed database technology that is the basis of blockchain, we have implemented various components to apply the advantages of blockchain through various proprietary technologies.
Let’s take a look at loopchain, PARAMETA’s proprietary engine that contains all of the original blockchain core technologies.
loopchain, PARAMETA’s proprietary blockchain core engine, implements features that are optimized for real-world business based on a structure that is faithful to the fundamentals of blockchain.
loopchain components
Blockchains are made up of many different components, and loopchain focuses on implementing each component to maximize the benefits of blockchain. To this end, we provide tools for developers, SDKs (software development kits), and operational tools in addition to nodes, and the combination of all these components can be used to build various basic services that utilize the advantages of blockchain.
So, what are the unique features of loopchain?
High performance consensus algorithm: PBFT
Hybrid P2P network: both public and private
Smart contract support: SCORE (Smart Contract on Reliable Environment)
Multi-Channel support: Increased performance and scalability
Interchain implementation: BTP (Blockchain Transmission Protocol)
The features of loopchain can be divided into five categories. loopchain uses a hybrid peer-to-peer network method that can be applied to both public and private networks, while compensating for the shortcomings of existing algorithms and improving speed and security through a high-performance consensus algorithm. It provides a smart contract execution environment based on universal, development-friendly languages (Python, Java), and supports interoperability based on interchain BTP technology while increasing performance and scalability with multi-channel technology.
High Performance Consensus Algorithm: PBFT (Tendermint or LFT)
loopchain uses the PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) consensus algorithm by default, and has implemented the algorithm as a plug-in, allowing for the concurrent use of other consensus algorithms as needed.
The consensus algorithm is the engine that determines the speed of block generation and ensures the stability of the blockchain, and throughput and fees are always a challenge. In the case of the existing PoW (Proof of Work) method, block generation is slow due to the time-consuming computation for proof of work, so BFT-based consensus algorithms with the advantages of fast consensus and finality are currently being used for performance. BFT-based consensus algorithms are based on voting and consensus through the number of machines or stakes, which means less energy is wasted and instantaneous consensus is possible.
PBFT, which is applied to loopchain by default, is a BFT-like consensus algorithm that is based on the BFT theory of consensus in distributed networks and focuses on achieving consensus securely even when there are malicious nodes in the network. PBFT is recognized for its speed and security advantages, as once a certain percentage of representative nodes agree, the block is applied to the chain for verification. In particular, PBFT on loopchain applies the Tendermint consensus algorithm, which has already been proven to be safe and lively.
PARAMETA also applies the LFT (Loop Fault Tolerance) consensus algorithm, which improves performance by making PBFT lightweight, ensuring high scalability and network bandwidth. In the case of PBFT, as the number of nodes participating in the blockchain increases, the number of message exchanges to achieve consensus between nodes increases exponentially, resulting in a decrease in speed and efficiency. The LFT consensus algorithm was developed for use in public networks with a large number of participating nodes to reduce message volume. In other words, LFT simplifies the process of data exchange between nodes by combining the process of committing a block and broadcasting the next block into one phase. When applying LFT, the message volume is reduced, but the block confirmation time may increase somewhat, so it is necessary to selectively apply the algorithm according to the environment.
* PARAMETA has been verified for stability and survivability of LFT by Prof. Yongdae Kim of KAIST.
(https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.04294.pdf)
Hybrid P2P Network: Public and Private
loopchain uses a hybrid P2P (peer-to-peer) network approach that can be applied both publicly and privately using Gossip and Structured Network. This is a structure that improves performance and security by organizing nodes hierarchically to distribute load and prevent direct access to Validator nodes. It also minimizes message transmission by ignoring duplicate messages that have been recently received or sent by that node, and by applying a technique that sends retransmission messages to only f+1 nodes in an environment of N(3f+1) validators.
Smart Contract Support: SCORE (Smart Contract on Reliable Environment)
* Source: https://pypl.github.io/PYPL.html
SCORE (Smart Contract on Reliable Environment) is a smart contract execution environment for loopchain.
The main feature of SCORE on loopchain is that you can freely configure the development environment through a development-friendly language. In the case of other blockchain platforms, smart contracts can only be written in a language that can be used in a specialized virtual machine, and data access and storage can only be stored through internal virtual machine variables, which has the disadvantage of reducing freedom. loopchain SCORE has the advantage of supporting Python and Java, which are the most common languages with the most developers, so it is easy to secure dApp developers. In particular, in the case of Java, high-performance execution such as native is possible using JIT (Just In Time) technology.
In addition, loopchain SCORE has an architecture that separates the smart contract execution engine, making it easy to support additional smart contract languages in the future.
* Support for Solidity and WebAssembly (WASM) in the future
Multi-Channel Support: Increased Performance and Scalability
Multi-channel support is another important feature of loopchain. Multi-channel is a feature that enables transaction requests, consensus, and smart contracts to be performed by channel by organizing a virtual network of channels for each task within one independent blockchain network. In other words, nodes are divided into related groups and each group is assigned a separate channel to enable block generation and verification by channel. This enables various channels to be formed for each task by connecting only the parties to the task to a single node, and since blocks are generated in parallel by channels, the independence of each channel is secured to ensure channel-specific integrity and consensus.
Among loopchain’s real-world applications, there are projects that have realized effective channel-specific work through multi-channel, such as the assignment of channels for each service (voting, used car transactions, qualification, mileage, authentication, etc.) by each department in Seoul, and the CHAIN ID and FDS (Fraud Detection System) channels of the Financial Investment Association.
Multi-channel support also improves overall performance. By categorizing transactions according to the type of account or transaction (TX) and allocating them to each channel, blocks are created for each channel, and key data or data that requires channel-specific exchange is registered in the main channel. As the number of channels increases, the TPS (Transaction Per Second, processing speed) performance improves. (TPS per channel x number of channels)
Interchain Implementation: BTP (Blockchain Transmission Protocol)
BTP, the Blockchain Transmission Protocol for interoperability is one of the most critical technologies applied to loopchain. BTP is a protocol that enables reliable data exchange between smart contracts running on different blockchains, and can be utilized not only for asset movement and message exchange between different blockchains, but also as a blockchain scalability technology to create an interchain ecosystem.
You can read more about BTP in a separate content >> Go to view
So far, we have introduced loopchain, an in-house developed engine that incorporates PARAMETA’s blockchain core source technology. Currently, loopchain is utilized in various fields such as public blockchains, enterprise blockchains, and public blockchains, and PARAMETA will continue to strive to apply the value of blockchain technology to various industries and everyday life.