Recently, the wave of destruction seems to have spread to the public chain.
On February 18, the privacy public chain SERO super zero coin announced that, through the resolution of the community and the foundation, the remaining half of the unproduced tokens will be destroyed, including the part destroyed in the previous mining. About 350 million pieces, which means that the total number of SEROs will drop sharply from 1 billion to 650 million.
As of February 25th, multiple EOS node signatures supported a multi-signature proposal, declaring that the total annual inflation rate of EOS 5% will be reduced from 5% to 1% (the inflation rate will be reduced by 80%), and the eosio.saving account will be destroyed More than 34 million EOS.
Undoubtedly, reducing inflation has its benefits, but how to adjust the conflict of interests of all parties in the ecology and how to make the rule modification more democratic are the problems that these practitioners need to focus on.
On the evening of March 2, Odaily Chaohua Community 042 invited TONY TANG, SERO Foundation Director and SERO Global Chief Strategy Officer, to talk about SEROs initial experience and experience in token destruction.
Friends who don’t know much about SERO can briefly read this introduction. SERO was founded in early 2018, and then received angel investment from former IDG partner Zhang Suyang, Leading Capital and Quantum Fund. According to the SERO white paper, it is positioned as an anonymous currency based on zk-SNARKs (zero-knowledge proof protocol), and supports Turing-complete smart contract operation. It can be understood as a combination of an enhanced version of ZCash and Ethereum, so it is also popular Known as Black Ethereum. In July 2019, the SERO mainnet was officially launched. With its improved Super-ZK technology, the encryption speed of a single transaction can reach 5-6 times that of Zcash; at the same time, developers are allowed to create contracts/DApps and release anonymous digital assets.
In the sharing, TONY TANG introduced the causes and consequences of the destruction proposal and its impact.
According to his introduction, the destruction proposal has been in effect for 2 days, and the amount of SERO pledged tokens has not changed at present; the POW computing power has decreased by more than 30% so far. However, because SERO adopts the POS+POW hybrid consensus, POW generates blocks, and POS verifies the legitimacy of blocks, so the rise and fall of POW computing power will not affect network security. From the perspective of the long-term impact of burning, both PoW and PoS miners can gain greater benefits from the robustness of the ecology.
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Technical characteristics and ecological situation of SERO
OdailyQ1: Can Tony introduce to you the general development process and project characteristics of SERO?
Tony：SERO is the worlds first privacy-protected public chain that supports Turings complete smart contracts and can issue anonymous digital assets.
SEROs privacy feature is based on the self-developed zero-knowledge proof encryption library Super-ZK, the encryption transaction speed is more than 20 times faster than ZCash (still 5-6 times faster than its latest version), and the security is far beyond the current mainstream privacy Coin Dash, Metro and Grin, etc., are the most powerful blockchain privacy protection solutions so far.
I invite everyone to do a performance comparison on a purely technical level. The digital assets issued on SERO support three structures: Token, Ticket and Package, which can meet the complexity required by business applications. Simply understood, SERO is the anonymous version of Ethereum.
SEROs main network was launched in July 2019, adopting the PoS+Pow hybrid consensus mechanism, and has been launched on more than 30 exchanges so far.
OdailyQ2: Tony also mentioned above that the transfer speed of SERO is an order of magnitude faster than that of Zcash. Can you briefly explain how this improvement is achieved?
Tony：1) We innovatively developed a Twisted Edwards curve to replace SHA256 to generate public keys, and use ECC Hash to generate Merkle trees, which can increase the transaction generation speed by more than 4 times.
1. The block generation time of SERO is much shorter than that of Zcash. The block generation time of Zcash is currently 75 seconds, while the average block generation time of SERO is 14 seconds. A shorter block generation time will bring fast transaction confirmation.
2. The zero-knowledge proof module Super-ZK of the SERO system has made a lot of optimizations and innovations compared to the use of Zcash combined with zk-SNARKs. for example:
1) We innovatively developed a Twisted Edwards curve to replace SHA256 to generate public keys, and use ECC Hash to generate Merkle trees, which can increase the transaction generation speed by more than 4 times.
3) Part of the code of Super-ZK is written in assembly language, which optimizes the engineering structure such as resource allocation, so that it has higher code execution efficiency.
3) Part of the code of Super-ZK is written in assembly language, which optimizes the engineering structure such as resource allocation, so that it has higher code execution efficiency.
Based on the above measures, the transfer speed of SERO is an order of magnitude faster than that of Zcash, which improves the efficiency of zero-knowledge proof technology.
OdailyQ3: The second major feature of SERO is to support smart contracts. Are there any similarities and differences between SEROs design of smart contracts and Ethereum? And what kind of contract is the current main use to create?
Tony：If you compare it with Ethereum, the application features that SERO can actually achieve far exceed Ethereum. One is data assets and account privacy protection, and the other contract can handle multiple different digital assets. In addition, SEROs contract supports very flexible data. Structure, supporting Turings complete contract can theoretically express any realistic logic, so these enable SERO to complete some applications that other public chains cannot complete.
OdailyQ4: SERO is also one of the few projects that chooses the POW+POS dual consensus mechanism and the ProgPOW algorithm. Can you tell us why it was designed this way and how it is running now?
Tony：SERO adopts ProgPoW as the mining PoW algorithm. The design idea of ProgPoW is relatively ingenious. Its purpose is to fully optimize the efficiency of the graphics card, so that the requirements of this algorithm match the hardware characteristics of the graphics card. If the algorithm is to be deployed on a specific ASIC, then compared with the graphics card, its efficiency improvement rate is only 1.1-1.2 times, so that the research and development of FPGA and ASIC mining machines no longer have profit margins. For SERO, the ProgPoW algorithm is the best FPGA and ASIC resistant PoW algorithm we have found. SERO is the largest practice of ProgPoW in the world. SERO has corrected many bugs in the original ProgPoW code and made it open source, and proved the stability of ProgPoW and made contributions to the PoW community.
At present, we are the currency with the highest computing power of the ProgPoW algorithm. At present, according to this computing power, there are about tens of thousands of graphics card mining machines mining.
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Recent Big Events: Burns and Halvings
OdailyQ5: Since the beginning of the new year, SERO has achieved more than 2 times the increase. According to statistics, the increase in the halving currency is second only to BSV. Tony, do you think this is due to the halving market or what are the positive factors? In addition, how do you see the trend of SERO before and after halving?
Tony：Lets go back to SEROs own fundamentals to look at the halving issue, that is, to adjust the inflation ratio to win-win for miners, investors, and ecological builders. From this perspective, according to rational investment logic, as long as investors understand this undoubted fundamental benefit, the market must continue to improve. Then the time point of halving is selected at the present time, which allows us to immediately focus on making the value of halving - we must truly have a quantitative description of the degree of ecological prosperity, and then present these descriptions in a fully transparent manner. This is another good thing to present to investors as the anchor of SERO value. As for the halving year of many currencies this year, it should be regarded as a coincidence of timing. At least we will not make decisions against the trend.
OdailyQ6: Just a few days ago, SERO also destroyed half of the unmined tokens. Interestingly, EOS also announced the destruction later. May I ask what are the considerations of SERO that destroyed earlier, what is the resolution process and the final destruction plan?
Tony：Although we have repeatedly emphasized that the initial positioning of SERO as a utility currency will inevitably require an important inflation rate adjustment when the time is ripe, but in terms of timing, the clear proposal for destruction was proposed by some foundations and community members. It is not that the project party unilaterally designs at the top level and modifies the rules.
There is a Vote decentralized application on SERO. After this proposal was clarified, it first got a 10:1 support rate on that application; then the council of the SERO Foundation made a proposal, and the final resolution was also obtained after 2 /3 vote to confirm. From this process, we can see a decentralized autonomous mechanism.
Going back to the starting point of modifying the rules, the existing ecological supply of Token is actually in excess of demand, and there is a problem of high inflation rate. It is necessary to briefly explain the number of destruction: the maximum reward for each block before this destruction is 71.2 Among them, PoW and PoS are 1:1, the maximum block reward after destruction is 35.6, PoW and PoS are still 1:1, and the output ratio released by the team is proportionally reduced. After the halving in April, the maximum block reward will go from 35.6/Block to 17.8/Block.
Judging from the impact of destruction, PoW miners may experience a slight decrease in the short term, but long-term profits may be able to achieve greater profits due to the improvement of SERO’s fundamentals, the gradual increase in ecological demand, and the return of inflation to a reasonable level. Eventually, the market value will continue to increase. Earnings; while the 10-12% currency-based POS annualized interest is still at a relatively high level in the industry, regardless of PoW or PoS miners, because of these adjustments, they will have greater confidence in long-term currency holdings and jump out of the mining and selling lift cycle.
OdailyQ7: The destruction proposal has been in effect for two days. Is there any major change in SERO’s mining computing power and pledged tokens?
Tony：SERO is a POS+POW hybrid consensus, and the destruction proposal has already taken effect. Currently, there is no change in the amount of pledged tokens; the POW computing power has decreased by more than 30% so far, because SERO is a graphics card mining machine, and the computing power will closely follow the Mining profit changes accordingly, so the change is very real-time, which is in line with our expectations. But this will not affect the security of the network. As mentioned above, the design of the dual-consensus mechanism requires attackers to simultaneously capture the POW computing power and most of the PoS nodes. If someone really has the financial resources to invest, the final result must be worth the candle.
OdailyQ8: Can you introduce some promotion plans of SERO after the destruction and natural halving?
Tony：On the development side, there are two battlefields. This upgrade will be accompanied by several work to significantly improve the infrastructure of the underlying network services, including improving storage capacity, computing power, special service node design, Dapp decision-making tools, quantitative ecological indicators, etc.; another battlefield is to focus on the development of business-level and industrial level application landing. This direction is in line with the development path of many public chain projects with strategic ambitions, and has also been highly recognized by many traditional institutional investors. This battlefield will be developed by an independent company, and the financing will be completed in a short period of time. Traditional financial institutions and SEROs original team will inject capital in the form of equity. In the future, Dapp development will enter a stage of healthy development where public initiative and SERO focus on breaking through walking on two legs.
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Looking at SERO from the perspective of privacy technology and smart contracts
OdailyQ9: SERO combines privacy and smart contracts, but it is difficult for many public chains to do their best. Many privacy coins will choose to become payment digital currencies, and public chains that emphasize Turings completeness usually hope to become the underlying system in a certain vertical field. In what areas does SERO want to expand its application?
Tony：SERO has three major Dapp clusters: supply chain management + finance, privacy data protection/anonymous payment, and intelligent asset management (including digital securitization). This is the most direct application field that the SERO team can grasp based on the design principles and core functions. But there are many public and spontaneous Dapps, SERO is a very open platform, and there are many innovative applications that those of us who build infrastructure may not expect. But from the perspective of the SERO team, in the next six months, each of the three application clusters will implement a representative business-level application.
OdailyQ10: We know that zk-SNARKs technology has been included in the development plan of Ethereum. Currently, there are many Layer 2 privacy protocols on Ethereum. What may be the competitive advantage of SERO itself?
Tony：Ethereum’s additional privacy protection based on Layer 2, compared with SERO, an anonymous public chain designed strictly from the bottom, its privacy protection technology is not perfect, and has the following problems.
2. The current Layer 2 privacy protection protocol can only prevent third parties from knowing the transfer amount, but cannot anonymize the addresses of both parties to the transaction.
2. The current Layer 2 privacy protection protocol can only prevent third parties from knowing the transfer amount, but cannot anonymize the addresses of both parties to the transaction.
3. The anonymous assets issued on Ethereum are only traded with anonymous amount of ERC20 tokens under the limitation of a smart contract. If they are separated from this smart contract environment, they are still currency transactions. From the perspective of protection scope, there is no guarantee 100% anonymized processing.
OdailyQ11: I would like to ask what do you think of some public chains (such as LTC, BCH) adding privacy technology to their own projects, will this disperse the market share of the original privacy coins?
Tony：This needs to be evaluated after those public chains have actually developed qualified anonymous technology. The traditional public chains that have been launched, because of their code and ecological history, have a heavy burden, and it is very difficult to add and practically implement anonymous functions. For example, BCH is only an entrance to a centralized currency mixing service built into the wallet. Compared with BTC’s currency mixing technology, there is no detailed technological innovation. Another example is LTC’s claim to realize the anonymous technology based on Mimble-wimble. This topic has already been hyped For more than a year, its expected launch time has also been postponed many times, and it is still very uncertain whether it can really be realized.
