At present, we see that many projects in the market will mark some numbers, such as TPS million, the number of blocks produced is 1 million, the number of daily transactions is 10,000, and the number of supported nodes is 1,000. Each number represents a different Significance, the numbers behind it all represent the staged progress in solving the iron triangle problem of the blockchain. Stable block generation represents security, high TPS represents performance, and a large number of supporting nodes represents decentralization. Of course, there are some Other indicators judge the popularity of the project, such as the number of daily transactions.
When explaining the problems of the Iron Triangle to ordinary users, I always tend to talk about more decentralization and not put too much emphasis on security and performance. First, because decentralization is irreversible, but because users can understand security and performance mechanisms There are not many, and it is not the crowd that should be oriented to interpretation. For the PoS projects established in the second half of 2015, many projects have begun to use the delegation (or voting) mechanism to select an important means of decentralization, so introducing the process of decentralization in the Stake/Vote process to users is very beneficial to a long-term development of the project.
The Stake/Vote model is designed to accomplish many goals of decentralization. The number of participating nodes is a relatively clear indicator. EOS21, Cosmos100, IOST and Tezos are all open without restrictions on the market. But at present, it is not so-called that the more nodes there are, the better the actual decentralization effect is. Although it is theoretically true, there is still another issue in the Iron Triangle that needs to be considered in practice - performance. In order to balance the election scheme, Now a large number of projects will create a candidate node pool before the election to provide decentralized candidates for the verifiers elected in the next cycle. The system will use a random algorithm to select some nodes from the node pool to actually generate blocks. This model has changed the centralization problem of some projects with few real block nodes. After 2018, some projects on the mainnet mostly adopt this method, among which IOST is the loudest, because in 2019 it hopes to open and participate in the number of nodes to reach 500.
IOST started the node recruitment plan at the end of 2018, and plans to recruit 500 nodes to participate in 2019. According to the reaction of the market, the number of 500 nodes is actually relatively large. The number of nodes that can be recruited by general projects is only about 100, and the number of high-quality nodes is only about 70-80. And because of the incentive model of the PoS consensus mechanism, resulting in Nodes with more Stake/Vote can get more rewards. Many token holders tend to find the top-ranked nodes. Nodes after seventy or eighty can hardly get too many rewards, so IOST called out 500 The recruitment of nodes is indeed a determination to decentralize. In addition, we have seen that in the IOST recruitment plan, there is a partner mechanism that supports token holders to participate in the consensus without running nodes. These partners need to understand technology, but they can also participate in the IOST consensus. We are used to using these Currency people call it Solo-Validator. Wetez wrote about the difference between Solo-Validator and Delegate (entrusted) to the validator before. You can check the previous article. The IOST development team's plan to support token holders to participate in the consensus with Solo-Validator is also considered a pioneering work in the industry. The partner nodes did not really participate in the block consensus, but it increased the overall Stake rate of the system, thereby improving the system. anti-attack ability (the logic is that the partner node reduces the IOST tokens circulating in the market, and the attacker needs to increase the purchase price to purchase enough attack computing power to attack the network, and the attack cost is relatively high. The relative sum here The amount of Stake that ultimately participates in the consensus is related).
In the IOST500 node model, nodes with a Stake/Vote amount of more than 2.1 million IOST can apply to become a block producing node. The new version upgrade mentioned 8 million IOST (not yet implemented, in the proposal stage), the main consideration is because In the early stage of network launch, the participation rate of Vote voting may gradually increase. In order to ensure the stability of the main network, the threshold of 2.1 million is an initial value. In terms of proportion, the development team of IOST raised the node threshold to 8 million, but this has brought about another impact. If the proposal is passed, the number of block producing nodes will be relatively reduced. According to the visual inspection on May 21, from 2.1 million The threshold of IOST is raised to 8 million IOST, the number of block producing nodes will be reduced from 57 to 41, and the overall percentage of Stake will be reduced by 3%, which is about 74 million IOST votes. The security has been reduced, but the proposal will be implemented After that, some nodes will make up tickets or withdraw, and the final number of block producing nodes has yet to be confirmed. I think there are still two considerations for the official to increase the threshold of block producing nodes. One is to increase the overall Stake/Vote amount of IOST, and the other is to strategically improve system performance to meet business requirements. As a project targeting a commercial OS system, the game between the Iron Triangle has been adjusting, so I think it is understandable to make plans at a reasonable time, just like Cosmos hopes that every year after the mainnet Among them, the number of validators participating is increased, and the number of seats is increased by about 30 per year, which is strongly related to technological development and 5G development.
Let’s talk about the reward model of IOST. As mentioned above, IOST nodes are divided into block producing nodes and non-block producing nodes. Block producing nodes are actually also called partner nodes, and partner nodes do not run services to participate in consensus. The Stake/Vote incentive model we generally refer to mainly encourages nodes that pay service computing power, so on IOST, there will be a 25% difference in block rewards between block producers and partner nodes. Block nodes can generate 25% more rewards than cooperative nodes in total rewards. Differentiating incentives is also a reasonable way of decentralization. It can effectively distinguish incentive objects, so that those who make more contributions can get rewards, and can drive other cooperative nodes to become block producing nodes. However, IOST has set a maximum reward for block producing Critical value (the critical value is a variable value, currently more than 90 million will not generate gains for block rewards), which can effectively prevent the problem that the strong are very strong.
At present, the final number of effective nodes in IOST is 113, but since the number of nodes after 100 is small, the number of Stake/Vote is small, so the reference is not meaningful. The decentralization of 100 nodes is in line with the degree of decentralization I mentioned at the beginning. Therefore, IOST basically meets the threshold of a decentralized project. However, the partner node mechanism, raising the threshold, and differentiating incentives are all trade-offs and means for the IOST project to achieve decentralization. Micro-innovation is worthy of praise . But going back to the overall point of view, although the IOST development team has used a variety of operational strategies to achieve decentralization, there are still some difficulties in reaching 500 high-quality nodes (high-quality nodes will help the project to develop and assist the media to publicize) , hold events together, etc.), these high-quality verification node candidates have always been the object of competition for the project, which is a kind of scarce resource. IOST is also working hard on the road of constantly attracting high-quality nodes. It can only be said that attracting 500 nodes is far away. Not the end of IOST, but 500 high-quality nodes.
