There are still 2 months left in 2019, so which is the most popular capital project in 2019? (except mainstream currencies)
Digital Currency Research InstitutionThe BlockThat answer was given in a report released in late September. Eleven of the 19 active investors invested in Coda, the report said. Open Coda's official Twitter, the top tweet is the project CTOIzaak MecklerVitalik and Vitalik will hold a seminar on "Zero-Knowledge Proof" on October 30, subtitled "How to Use SNARKs (Coda's innovative technology)". It looks more like a V God platform promotion project.
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01. 20KB blockchain forever
In the introduction of the official website, Coda is the first cryptocurrency protocol with a constant size blockchain. Current cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum store hundreds of gigabytes of data, and as usage grows, the accumulated data will only increase. For example, the full node size of Bitcoin has increased from 6GB in Q1 2013 to 210GB in Q1 2019, a 35-fold increase in 6 years, with an average annual growth rate of 80%. However, the full node of Ethereum increased 19 times in one year during the bull market of 2016-17.
We know that to verify a cryptocurrency transaction, a full copy of the blockchain needs to be downloaded first. But downloading a file of hundreds of gigabytes and running it isn't for everyone. Especially in a distributed world.
Coda is designed such that its blockchain remains the same size (~20KB, the size of a few tweets) no matter how usage grows. This means that nodes can be accessed and run from any smartphone or computer browser.
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(Figure: traditional blockchain (top) and Coda (bottom), source:Blockchain small data）
So how does zk-SNARK compress the blockchain?
In our common blockchain, nodes generally verify each transaction and then package them into blocks. For example, Bitcoin produces a block at a fixed time (10 minutes on average), and the verification speed determines the block size. In the Coda blockchain, nodes verify not every specific transaction, but the recursive composition of zero-knowledge proofs.
First, zero-knowledge proofs allow traders to prove authenticity without disclosing the actual data. For example, the verification of a block does not need to know the transaction data contained in the block itself.
Secondly, the principle of recursive compression means that assuming we generate a proof that the state transition from state 0 to state 1 is legal, and then we continue to generate a proof that the state transition from state 1 to state 2 is legal, then , we can combine these two proofs into one proof that the state transition from state 0 to state 2 is legal. By analogy, the proofs of each state transition can be recursively combined into one proof, and finally we get the proof from 0 to the latest state.
Similarly, every time a Coda node generates a new block, it simultaneously generates a SNARK proof to verify whether the block is valid. All nodes on the network can store this proof and move forward. Every time a new block is generated, there is a new SNARK proof, but awlays only has one SNARK proof. So it looks like just a short chain as shown in the picture above. Here we avoid verifying the complex transaction data in the block. Coda is therefore also known as a lightweight blockchain.
However, regarding the consensus mechanism of this project, neither the white paper nor the official blog is very clear. For example, the white paper only says that it is a bit similar to Ouoroboros Praos proof-of-stake protocol, and its final state may be a POS chain.
Therefore, the roles in the Coda network may not only become verifiers by pledging tokens, but also node operators, delegators and other roles.
In the Coda network, the participating roles are mainly Staker and Snark-workers. Among them, Staker corresponds to the role of verifier, and the operation threshold is low. As long as you pledge Coda tokens, you can get block rewards. Snark-workers correspond to node operators, and can also become principals, generate zk snarks proofs, and are responsible for detecting and verifying the authenticity of transactions. But the two roles are not completely opposite. You can be both Staker and Snark-workers, but the operation of Snark-workers is relatively complicated.
How to participate?
How to participate?
Whether you want to become a Staker or a Snark Worker, you first need to download the Coda protocol:
Require:
Software: macOS or Linux (Windows system is not supported yet)
Hardware: Sending and receiving coda requires any special hardware, just download the wallet, but as a node operator you need:
At least a 4-core processor
At least 8 GB of RAM
GPU is currently not required, but node operators will need it when they upgrade the protocol
Send a message to the robot on discord, and you will get 100 Coda as the initial capital, and then through a series of operations, you can become the Staker or Snark Worker or client you want to be. (Here is a detailed operation guide）
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02. Community development and development progress
The project community is still very active. Currently, there are 6,400 fans on Twitter, nearly 6,000 members on Telegram, more than 800 members on Discord, and 618 fans on reddit.
Coda has held several offline meetups in San Francisco, attracting a large number of developers to participate, and its popularity is relatively strong.
In addition to the discussion with V God on October 30, in early October this year, Coda established the Testnet Advisory Committee and invited Luke Youngblood, a former member of the Tezos team, and Zaki Manian, a member of the Cosmos team, as technical advisors to help launch the mainnet. And emphasized that it will develop together with these two communities.
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03. Financing Information
Coda has raised a total of $18.5 million from investors including MetaStable, Polychain Capital, Electric Capital, Naval Ravikant, Charlie Noyes, Elad Gil, Linda Xie, Fred Ehrsam, Jack Herrik, Kindred Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Dekrypt Capital, Nima, and most recently The round of financing was on April 5, 2019. However, the financing subject iso1labssecondary title
04. Team background
CEO Evan Shapiro is a Carnegie Bachelor of Computer Science and Master of Robotics, and previously worked as a software engineer at Mozilla.
CTO Izaak Meckler is a Ph.D. in cryptography from Berkeley. He previously worked as a software engineer at the Jane Street hedge fund and contributed source code to a number of open source software, including the Elm language compiler.
The team currently has 21 people, and the first-line developers are all active figures in the functional programming community, which may be related to the adoption of OCaml language for the entire project.
Project advisors include CEO of CoinlistAndy Brombergsecondary titleBenedikt Bünz。
05. Summary
References
References
White Paper: Coda: Decentralized cryptocurrency at scale
Read the lightweight blockchain protocol Coda in one article: make the ledger bytes from G to k
Coda: A protocol that makes cryptocurrencies lighter and more decentralized
Coda: Keeping Cryptocurrency Decentralized
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