From the development of PoW to PoS consensus mechanism, we are faced with a common problem "who generates the block", how to maintain the operation of the network safely and efficiently, we will use two chapters to analyze in detail the problems faced, and the current industry There are solutions and PlatON's solutions.
Due to its characteristics of decentralization, non-tampering, verifiability and traceability, blockchain technology has been highly valued by governments, financial institutions and social organizations. As the core of the blockchain, the "consensus mechanism" determines the important properties of the blockchain such as security, decentralization, and scalability, so it is particularly important.
The PoW consensus mechanism originally proposed by Bitcoin obtains bookkeeping rights through computing power to continuously calculate the solution to a difficult problem, resulting in waste of resources and low efficiency. In addition, the monopoly of computing power in major mining pools also leads to its gradual loss of decentralization. .
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random number scheme
In essence, both PoW and PoS are solving who produces the block and how to reach a consensus on the block safely and efficiently to maintain a distributed ledger.
In order to better achieve decentralization and security, the selected nodes need to be random. Therefore, how to obtain a safe and consistent random number that everyone agrees with has become a key issue.
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VRF
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BLS Threshold Signature
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PVSS
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VDF
Proposed by Stanford University cryptography professor Dan Boneh and others in their paper Verifiable Delay Function, VDF is a mathematical function that can guarantee the uniqueness of the result and the seriality of the process. The function accepts some input parameters (data and time, etc.) and It is guaranteed that the calculation will take at least a certain period of time before the result can be obtained, and the verifier can quickly verify the correctness of the result according to the input parameters.
Summarize
Summarize
Various implementation schemes have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they make different solutions from different perspectives and different goals, but in the end, no matter how various random selection schemes are implemented, they should all aim at ensuring decentralization, security and high performance.
In the next article, we will introduce the random scheme of validator election in PlatON, so stay tuned!
