The idea of the TNS project was born from the search for a universal mechanism of trust between interacting subjects on the internet, eliminating the need to refer to a centralized third party as a tool for subject verification. There is still no universal general standard for determining the degree of trust in an interacting subject in the world. Reliable verification mechanisms are multi-layered and difficult to use. Moreover, they can be corrupted at the level where people are involved in the verification process.
Two problems need to be solved: creating an easy-to-use identification and verification tool and the ability to make the use of this tool widespread – breaking the network barrier.
The idea that solves both problems at once is a new universal space of names that will gain reputation through the social graph referral system. This referral system is also the mechanic for breaking the network barrier. A name with a large social graph and a large number of tokens will be unprofitable to use in dubious operations, incentivizing "proper behavior". On the other hand, the desire to increase social capital and earn more tokens encourages the building of the social graph and attracting new users to the namespace.
Trust in data is ensured by the existing Ethereum infrastructure, as it is the most authoritative and proven blockchain project where smart contracts are implemented. Digital contracts were built on the Ethereum test network. At first glance, Ethereum's capabilities as a basic infrastructure seemed sufficient to break the network barrier, and then the project could be transferred to its own blockchain.
As the project's ideas evolved, the estimates of its future audience were revised several times upwards. This required a revision of the technical implementation requirements of the project. One thing is a goal of 2-3 million users with a small number of transactions per day, and another thing is 500-700 million users and the possibility of creating various KYC systems, ratings, and reputation assessment by third-party developers. It is also important to reduce transaction costs for the average user.
The number of transactions in Ethereum for all projects using this technology is about 25 transactions per second. For comparison, Visa can process more than 45,000 transactions per second. As of December 2022, there were 4.23 billion active Visa cards in the world, 190 billion transactions in 2022, an average of 520 million transactions per day, or about 6,000 transactions per second. Ethereum developers understand the limitations and constantly work on increasing the network's performance. The main bet is placed on L2 solutions, which move part of the transaction processing work to an external software environment, and transaction results are recorded in the Ethereum network, ensuring their veracity, immutability, and decentralization. This is called Off-chain scaling. The main idea of such scaling in creating a sidechain is that the main blockchain should be used only as a trust and arbitration layer. Off-chain scaling is often called "Second-layer" (layer 2 — L2) scaling, because it involves moving transactions to layers that sit on top of the Ethereum base blockchain. In 2022, Vitalik Buterin announced that the capacity would reach up to 100,000 transactions per second through various L2 solutions. The Ethereum main network code update constantly includes improvements for better compatibility with various L2 products.
The implementation of L2 solutions can be organized in various ways. In TNS, extensive work was done to select such a solution. What additional requirements would be important in the long term? This includes the ability to create tens of thousands of third-party projects, the ability to serve billions of users, the ability to record billions of endorsements from one name to another, etc. The lowest possible commission costs and the possibility of organizing more complex referral system algorithms that economically support greater branching of the name graph. Extensive integration capabilities with various projects and blockchains. It was also important to choose a solution that could work as an L1 blockchain, so that as the audience grows, synchronization with Ethereum could be abandoned, and commissions could be further reduced.
Cosmos and HyperLedger Fabric were in the shortlist of technologies. The logic for choosing between them is detailed in the TNS whitepaper.
Finally, the decision was made to create SaideChain for TNS using HyperLedger Fabric technology and name it TrueConnect. Some advantages of this solution are: basic transaction speed of over 3000 per second, low commissions, the ability to connect a large number of third-party projects without risking reducing the main functionality speed. HyperLedger Fabric allows using the Go language to write smart contracts. The advantage of this language is that it allows building verifiable contracts with more complex logic than Solidity.
TNS is building its own blockchain TrueConnect based on corporate HyperLedger technology, developed since December 2015 by the Linux Foundation in collaboration with IBM, Intel, and SAP Ariba. This will ensure a transaction speed of over 3000 per second, 150 times faster than the Ethereum network, with better security and distribution due to the Proof of Involvement (POI) consensus.
TrueConnect is an autonomous network that initially works as L2 for Ethereum. TrueConnect uses the time-tested technology of the Polygon project for connection with Ethereum, specifically the Heimdall bridge. Polygon is the most recognized and possibly the most effective tool for scaling Ethereum. Polygon takes part of Ethereum's load, making it faster and reducing network fees. This network is easy for the user and understandable for the developer. Nearly 20,000 applications use the Polygon network, including Instagram.
Features of TrueConnect:
1. The ability to connect a second wallet to the name. This will allow the name owner to sign any actions without the risk of exposing the private key of the wallet holding the name or signing a transaction that steals assets.
2. The name stores True tokens. There is a technical ability to distinguish tokens that reach the name through the social graph referral system from those that are simply transferred to the name. This is necessary for POI to work well: only tokens received through the referral system are considered for the right to have a node.
3. The economic model of POI distribution is more resistant to the possibility of taking control of the consensus compared to Proof of Work (in Bitcoin, the majority of capacity is provided by only 10 pools) or Proof of Stake (the network can be financially centralized by large capital owners). Technically, POI is even more efficient in terms of security and speed of operation, allowing for a better balance of the blockchain trilemma: decentralization, security, and performance. This topic deserves a separate presentation on the comparison of consensus mechanisms. POI is an original idea with a great future.
4. The possibility of implementing a large number of third-party projects that will not slow down the main functionality of the network. A separate channel is created for each new project.
5. The ability for original integrations with Web 3.0 blockchain ecosystems, corporate systems, and Web 2.0 social networks.
6. Through integrations with already existing social networks or by creating new projects, TNS will allow forming next-generation social networks where the name belongs to the owner and cannot be destroyed by network administrators. The authority of the subject behind the name and the social graph can be common to various social networks. Social capital becomes protected from the arbitrariness of administrators and owners of specific digital platforms. It becomes possible to differentiate "likes" in social networks by the level of trust and reputation, mitigating the work of "inflation" mechanics. One thing is when your message is liked by a bot, another is when it is liked by Musk or Buterin. TNS will allow considering the authority of network users when they demonstrate their content evaluation. Similarly, product rating systems in marketplaces, freelancer rating systems on digital service aggregator platforms can be changed. And this is just one of the many directions of TNS integration with already existing mass network solutions. Integrations will give an additional impulse to the exponential growth in the number of namespace users once the network barrier is broken.
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