As interest in decentralized applications soar,then is an increasing need for robust systems to cater for this growing economy,many have attempted to solve this challenge and have not made substantial progress,Zenon leverages the pros of well established ledgers and consensus mechanisms and uses dual network architecture,it has a system for storing data as well as a system for consensus,it also has two tokens. Let’s explore the world of distributed ledgers,consensus mechanisms and Zenon Network.

Distributed ledgers are basically ledgers that store records in a distributed fashion and at the heart of it is  consensus (how do we actually come to agreement),how tolerant is the network against things like fault and byzantine attacks.

There are different kinds of distributed ledgers out there,we have the likes of public ledgers,private ledgers and a hybrid of them.

Let’s talk about Bitcoin

Bitcoin uses what we call the proof of work system where a node or a miner in the network has to do some computation to produce the nonce behind the transaction.

So is like trying to solve the puzzle behind a transaction.

A simple bitcoin transaction consists of an input,output and some metadata,it uses the public-key infrastructure,where the addresses we give to everybody is what we called address(or public key) and the private key is the key that you can actually use to decrypt such account and sign messages.

So they are basically contract that can execute autonomously,we have the likes of Nick Szabo who actually envisioned them and then bitcoin for instance can do simple smart contracts using its programming(scripting) language,this smart contracts are limited,they are not turing complete,you can do just basic things like “do this at this time”,it’s simple but if you want to take this thing to a whole new realm of things,you will have to use something like Ethereum.

Code is law

Ethereum contracts are deterministic and verifiable but if you do smart contracts the wrong way,you will get the negative backlash of them,that is where talk about the pros and cons of smart contracts,there are things like underflow,overflow and *lot of errors *that go with smart contracts.

Types of DLT

Now as we are trying to push in this lesson,we will talk about the ledgers that **Zenon network ** is actually using,lets take about the difference between a distributed ledger and a blockchain,as you can see in this image here,a blockchain is just a subset of distributed ledgers and there are different stuffs,we will talk about.

A blockchain uses a data structure that is linear,it consists of blocks and then merkle trees,the block basically houses transactions, how many transactions can actually go into a block are predefined at launch or with upgrades,we could define how much time will it take to process that transaction and we can now specify how does transaction in the block can be executed.

The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it — Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin uses the principle of the longest chain,it rewards the chain with the most effort,so with the issues of block size,the longest chain principle ,performing transactions and confirming them sequentially,we are talking about the reduction and sacrifice of TPS.

Another type of DLT is the DAG,it is a data structure that looks like a block graph and a tree,it’s finds widely used in IOTA,Avalanche,ByteBall,Hashgraph etc. In IOTA for example,for you to have your transaction confirmed,you will have to confirm two previous transactions. For a system like this,it’s very fast but the issue comes with security,designing the security system for this is very hard,

Another type of DLT is the Holochain, Holochain does not use data centric approach,blockchain takes a data-centric while Holochain takes an agent-centric,Holochain is a system that where there are different nodes in the system does not do one thing,if data comes into the network,it is not replicated across every single node,a node will only have anything to do with the system as long as it’s contextual,so what that means is that if the node in the network does not have anything to do with particular application or data,it simply ignores it,It’s not like in Ethereum were if a smart contract is been executed on platform X or platform Z,every single node has to run such computation and validate,no is not like Ethereum,an agent centric approach.

And then we have the likes of block-lattice where rather than we take a whole blockchain where everybody transactions are executed by as a whole,we take an independent chain approach(account chain),so a chain can validate itself and while also maintaining concurrency,so because account chains can grow concurrently,the throughput on the network can actually scale. A successful implementation is the Nano.

Zenon  takes a dual ledger approach,it uses a meta DAG as its consensus layer,and a block lattice data for storing the transaction, making accessing and storing data very cheap and conservative. It uses this dual architecture to acheive better efficiency.

a brief overview about consensus

Zenon Network improves on the current consensus designs,we evaluate them based on parameters like security and performance.

Security : :how well can it resist against things like adversaries,byzantine nodes,the ability to defend against sybil attacks,how will it defend itself against denial of service attacks,censorship etc.

Performance : : how will the system fare,in terms of throughput(like how many transactions per second can it process,can it scale if we are adding more nodes to the network,will it increase the performance or will it result in the degradation of performance **(scalability),**how tolerant is the network to faults **(fault tolerance),**probably fault that are malicious and those that are not malicious,and lastly we talk about ***latency,***what time does it take to finalize a transaction.

There are different kind of consensus mechanisms,we have the likes of proof of work which we see in bitcoin,it takes a lot of energy, there is** centralization within decentralization, **it takes a lot of capital to startup and it is very wasteful(energy and computational wise).

Apart from PoW,there are other forms of consensus,we have the likes of proof of stake,rather than use energy,it uses stake on the network,a node can validate transactions based on how much stake they have in the network,there are different variants of Proof of Stake implementation,we have the likes of DPoS like in Lisk(101),Eos(21),Tezos(random)(where committees are elected).

Another include a hybrid variant of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant with either PoS(Zilliqa) or PoW(Tendermint),others include the likes proof of importance in NEM,proof of capacity in BurstCoin and ** others.**

The next amazing form of consensus is virtual voting,it sees everything in the network as message,like it’s been implemented inside Hedera,if a node receives information or transaction, to acknowledge the receipt of such transaction,that node will have to do gossip, .. the gossip is that node sends that transaction and also other gossips to another which their own gossips to another node which sends that transaction until it reaches a specific threshold,now everyone knows about what everyone did as well as the time.

So you might be asking what kind of consensus will Zenon be using,Zenon will be using a virtual voting scheme like in Hedera Hashgraph gossip about gossip and then it will be use a hybrid Proof of Stake and Proof of Work.

Nodes in the Zenon Network

We have the trusting(sentry) nodes ,they basically store the transactional data or their pruned version ,they have a very simple function of monitoring traffic for specific accounts,they require minimal resources to run

We also have the **trusting(sentinel) nodes,**they involved with proof of work links,they require moderate resources to run,and finally there is consensus(pillar) nodes,they engage in consensus,they help in relaying network traffic to other pillar nodes, they requires high resources to run,also you have to stake 15000 ZNN

As a user you have to initiate a transaction and then the sentinel nodes to acknowledge the receipt of the transaction,it will do some computation(proof of work links) ,attach some data to it and then it will relay that transaction to other sentinel nodes and the process continues until it reaches a specific weight threshold for it to be considered valid after which this result will be sent to a consensus nodes which is chosen at random for final validation and that will put a final stamp of approval and then we can actually say this will serve as a standard,once the pillar nodes put their stamp of approval,it cannot be changed,so we take it as a point of reference.

Unikernels in Zenon Network

Unikernerls are basically a minimalistic form(standalone) of virtual environment. Zenon network apps(Zapps) run using unikernerls and there are various reasons why this is very good as it introduces security, immutability and privacy.

So what are some of the attacks that can possibly attack in the system and how does Zenon Network combats them,things like double spending that can actually happen in the system, and to combat against double spending,it uses what we call the consensus nodes,it cannot actually work because the consensus node only receive a final version of computed transactions after after the sentinel nodes have done gossip about gossip using proof of work links over a repeated number of times until it achieves a minimum threshold,there are other possibilities like attacks,like forking attacks which cannot happen and then DNS attacks,eclipse attacks and others which are well taken care of.

Website|Whitepaper|Twitter|Medium|Telegram

As interest in decentralized applications soar,then is an increasing need for robust systems to cater for this growing economy,many have attempted to solve this challenge and have not made substantial progress,Zenon leverages the pros of well established ledgers and consensus mechanisms and uses dual network architecture,it has a system for storing data as well as a system for consensus,it also has two tokens. Let’s explore the world of distributed ledgers,consensus mechanisms and Zenon Network.

Distributed ledgers are basically ledgers that store records in a distributed fashion and at the heart of it is  consensus (how do we actually come to agreement),how tolerant is the network against things like fault and byzantine attacks.

There are different kinds of distributed ledgers out there,we have the likes of public ledgers,private ledgers and a hybrid of them.

Let’s talk about Bitcoin

Bitcoin uses what we call the proof of work system where a node or a miner in the network has to do some computation to produce the nonce behind the transaction.

So is like trying to solve the puzzle behind a transaction.

A simple bitcoin transaction consists of an input,output and some metadata,it uses the public-key infrastructure,where the addresses we give to everybody is what we called address(or public key) and the private key is the key that you can actually use to decrypt such account and sign messages.

So they are basically contract that can execute autonomously,we have the likes of Nick Szabo who actually envisioned them and then bitcoin for instance can do simple smart contracts using its programming(scripting) language,this smart contracts are limited,they are not turing complete,you can do just basic things like “do this at this time”,it’s simple but if you want to take this thing to a whole new realm of things,you will have to use something like Ethereum.

Code is law

Ethereum contracts are deterministic and verifiable but if you do smart contracts the wrong way,you will get the negative backlash of them,that is where talk about the pros and cons of smart contracts,there are things like underflow,overflow and *lot of errors *that go with smart contracts.

Types of DLT

Now as we are trying to push in this lesson,we will talk about the ledgers that **Zenon network ** is actually using,lets take about the difference between a distributed ledger and a blockchain,as you can see in this image here,a blockchain is just a subset of distributed ledgers and there are different stuffs,we will talk about.

A blockchain uses a data structure that is linear,it consists of blocks and then merkle trees,the block basically houses transactions, how many transactions can actually go into a block are predefined at launch or with upgrades,we could define how much time will it take to process that transaction and we can now specify how does transaction in the block can be executed.

The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it — Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin uses the principle of the longest chain,it rewards the chain with the most effort,so with the issues of block size,the longest chain principle ,performing transactions and confirming them sequentially,we are talking about the reduction and sacrifice of TPS.

Another type of DLT is the DAG,it is a data structure that looks like a block graph and a tree,it’s finds widely used in IOTA,Avalanche,ByteBall,Hashgraph etc. In IOTA for example,for you to have your transaction confirmed,you will have to confirm two previous transactions. For a system like this,it’s very fast but the issue comes with security,designing the security system for this is very hard,

Another type of DLT is the Holochain, Holochain does not use data centric approach,blockchain takes a data-centric while Holochain takes an agent-centric,Holochain is a system that where there are different nodes in the system does not do one thing,if data comes into the network,it is not replicated across every single node,a node will only have anything to do with the system as long as it’s contextual,so what that means is that if the node in the network does not have anything to do with particular application or data,it simply ignores it,It’s not like in Ethereum were if a smart contract is been executed on platform X or platform Z,every single node has to run such computation and validate,no is not like Ethereum,an agent centric approach.

And then we have the likes of block-lattice where rather than we take a whole blockchain where everybody transactions are executed by as a whole,we take an independent chain approach(account chain),so a chain can validate itself and while also maintaining concurrency,so because account chains can grow concurrently,the throughput on the network can actually scale. A successful implementation is the Nano.

Zenon  takes a dual ledger approach,it uses a meta DAG as its consensus layer,and a block lattice data for storing the transaction, making accessing and storing data very cheap and conservative. It uses this dual architecture to acheive better efficiency.

a brief overview about consensus

Zenon Network improves on the current consensus designs,we evaluate them based on parameters like security and performance.

Security : :how well can it resist against things like adversaries,byzantine nodes,the ability to defend against sybil attacks,how will it defend itself against denial of service attacks,censorship etc.

Performance : : how will the system fare,in terms of throughput(like how many transactions per second can it process,can it scale if we are adding more nodes to the network,will it increase the performance or will it result in the degradation of performance **(scalability),**how tolerant is the network to faults **(fault tolerance),**probably fault that are malicious and those that are not malicious,and lastly we talk about ***latency,***what time does it take to finalize a transaction.

There are different kind of consensus mechanisms,we have the likes of proof of work which we see in bitcoin,it takes a lot of energy, there is** centralization within decentralization, **it takes a lot of capital to startup and it is very wasteful(energy and computational wise).

Apart from PoW,there are other forms of consensus,we have the likes of proof of stake,rather than use energy,it uses stake on the network,a node can validate transactions based on how much stake they have in the network,there are different variants of Proof of Stake implementation,we have the likes of DPoS like in Lisk(101),Eos(21),Tezos(random)(where committees are elected).

Another include a hybrid variant of the Byzantine Fault Tolerant with either PoS(Zilliqa) or PoW(Tendermint),others include the likes proof of importance in NEM,proof of capacity in BurstCoin and ** others.**

The next amazing form of consensus is virtual voting,it sees everything in the network as message,like it’s been implemented inside Hedera,if a node receives information or transaction, to acknowledge the receipt of such transaction,that node will have to do gossip, .. the gossip is that node sends that transaction and also other gossips to another which their own gossips to another node which sends that transaction until it reaches a specific threshold,now everyone knows about what everyone did as well as the time.

So you might be asking what kind of consensus will Zenon be using,Zenon will be using a virtual voting scheme like in Hedera Hashgraph gossip about gossip and then it will be use a hybrid Proof of Stake and Proof of Work.

Nodes in the Zenon Network

We have the trusting(sentry) nodes ,they basically store the transactional data or their pruned version ,they have a very simple function of monitoring traffic for specific accounts,they require minimal resources to run

We also have the **trusting(sentinel) nodes,**they involved with proof of work links,they require moderate resources to run,and finally there is consensus(pillar) nodes,they engage in consensus,they help in relaying network traffic to other pillar nodes, they requires high resources to run,also you have to stake 15000 ZNN

As a user you have to initiate a transaction and then the sentinel nodes to acknowledge the receipt of the transaction,it will do some computation(proof of work links) ,attach some data to it and then it will relay that transaction to other sentinel nodes and the process continues until it reaches a specific weight threshold for it to be considered valid after which this result will be sent to a consensus nodes which is chosen at random for final validation and that will put a final stamp of approval and then we can actually say this will serve as a standard,once the pillar nodes put their stamp of approval,it cannot be changed,so we take it as a point of reference.

Unikernels in Zenon Network

Unikernerls are basically a minimalistic form(standalone) of virtual environment. Zenon network apps(Zapps) run using unikernerls and there are various reasons why this is very good as it introduces security, immutability and privacy.

So what are some of the attacks that can possibly attack in the system and how does Zenon Network combats them,things like double spending that can actually happen in the system, and to combat against double spending,it uses what we call the consensus nodes,it cannot actually work because the consensus node only receive a final version of computed transactions after after the sentinel nodes have done gossip about gossip using proof of work links over a repeated number of times until it achieves a minimum threshold,there are other possibilities like attacks,like forking attacks which cannot happen and then DNS attacks,eclipse attacks and others which are well taken care of.

Website|Whitepaper|Twitter|Medium|Telegram