Dear Sir/Madame
Dero is the first crypto project to combine a Proof of Work blockchain with a DAG block structure and wholly anonymous transactions. The fully distributed ledger processes transactions with a twelve-second average block time and is secure against majority hashrate attacks. Dero will be the first CryptoNote blockchain to have smart contracts on its native chain without any extra layers or secondary blockchains.
The project was launched in December 2017 comprising a team of three full-time Developers. The core team members each have over a decade of experience in crypotgraphy and blockchain development.
The first significant milestone was reached in March 2018 when the developers implemented a world-first: a complete re-write of the CryptoNote protocol in Golang. This programming language was chosen because it has a high degree of immunity to security vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows and dangling pointers.
In April 2018, the Dero network migrated to the Golang code base without a single second of downtime. The migration of the code base coincided with a number of sophisticated attacks on CryptoNote based coins. Dero core team studied how the attacks were implemented and designed a new type of blockchain that is resistant to 51% hashrate attacks and softforks.
The Dero project unveiled this new blockchain technology in June 2018, codenamed “Atlantis”. It combines the Cryptonote protocol with directed acyclic graph and Bulletproofs. However, these are not just any Bulletproofs, but what have been coined Rocket Bulletproofs, leading to blocktimes of just a few seconds. In a controlled environment, the Atlantis network can achieve blocktimes as low as three seconds processing a thousand transactions per second. A world wide testnet was launched with a nine-second blocktime which allowed for extensive tests of the new technology.
July 2018 saw the successful and flawless migration of the Dero network to the new Atlantis codebase with a twelve-second block time and two minute confirmation time. This is by far the fastest CryptoNote based blockchain ever deployed, with up to 75 transactions per second. A relatively longer twelve second block time was chosen so that people in locations with sub-optimal network connectivity could still participate in the network. The Dero team plans to reduce the blocktime further in coming years, as network infrastructure improves around the world.
With a ground-breaking minimum viable product established by August 2018, just eight months after conception, the Dero team initiated applications for listings on major exchanges. A bold new marketing initiative is in the process of being established, with a primary focus on professional and business users and developers. An advisory team drawn from and representing the wider Dero community has been formed, and a new Dero Foundation that will support the aims of the Dero Project is in the process of being formed.
DERO Atlantis combines the Cryptonote protocol with directed acyclic graph and Bulletproofs
DERO DAG implementation builds outs a main chain from the DAG network of blocks which refers to main blocks (100% reward) and side blocks (8% rewards). Side blocks contribute to chain PoW security and thus traditional 51% attacks are not possible on DERO network. If DERO network finds another block at the same height, instead of choosing one, DERO include both blocks. Thus, rendering the 51% attack futile.
Traditional Blockchains process blocks as single unit of computation(if a double-spend tx occurs within the block, entire block is rejected). However DERO network accepts such blocks since DERO blockchain considers transaction as a single unit of computation. DERO blocks may contain duplicate or double-spend transactions which are filtered by client protocol and ignored by the network. DERO DAG processes transactions atomically one transaction at a time.
DERO also includes Rocket Bulletproofs, Ten Times Faster Than Regular Bulletproofs.
While a typical Bulletproof takes ~15 ms to verify, Dero’s Rocket Bulletproofs only take ~1.5 ms.
Bulletproofs are a cryptographic technique that reduce the space needed for zero-knowledge range proofs in anonymous transactions. In anonymous transactions, the exact amounts are hidden, but the network still has to make sure that the transaction is valid (e.g. no coins are generated out of thin air).
For this, commitments to values are used in anonymous transactions. The most important one is the Pedersen commitment, which proves that the outputs of a transaction are not larger than the inputs. However, there is a method to fool the Pedersen commitment by using very large numbers for the transaction outputs that lead to overflowing. To avoid this, range proofs are used, which prove that the outputs lie in a certain range of values.
Range proofs have a size of ~4 kilobytes for 64 bits of precision, with Bulletproofs the proof size is only 672 bytes, which greatly reduces the blockchain size.
But not only the size, also the speed of the verification of the proof is important as transactions are processed by the network. For this, the Dero team studied the existing Bulletproof implementations and managed to increase the performance by a factor of ten.
The Dero engineers achieved this by optimizing the double-base double-scalar multiplications that are necessary for validating bulletproofs. Dero Atlantis uses pre-compute tables to convert 64*2 Base Scalar multiplications into doublings and additions.
The Dero Project is building a blockchain network that will be used by thousands of businesses across the globe. Therefore, the security of the network is of highest importance. Unencrypted communication via HTTP possess a risk for privacy, security and integrity of the network participants. Dero is the first blockchain project to use TLS encryption for its network communication, which protects the network participants from eavesdropping and tampering of network data.
TLS secures data transfers by using asymmetric encryption techniques to generate a shared secret key. The shared key is then used for the symmetric encryption of messages, which is faster than asymmetric encryption. The encrypted messages are unreadable for someone who is spying on the network.
The Dero team also keeps future large scale applications in mind, e.g. enterprise servers which handle thousands of clients per second. They are continuously working on making the network even faster to accomplish this goal. For the encrypted network, they performed benchmarks and ended up choosing ECDSA instead of RSA as method for key generation as it allows for a higher number of handshakes per second.
DERO has now launched Smart Contracts on to its testnet. With the launch of Smart Contracts on testnet we are also launching a development competition with prizes worth a total of 10,000 DERO.
We are looking for innovative, fun and functional Smart Contracts.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite developers to build smart contracts on our chain and win up to 10,000 DERO coins.
Please see below links to documents regarding smart contracts on the DERO chain.
Docs:
https://git.dero.io/DeroProject/dvm_docSource:
https://git.dero.io/DeroProject/derosuite_stargateBinaries:
https://git.dero.io/DeroProject/Dero_Stargate_testnet_binariesSmart Contract Example:
https://git.dero.io/DeroProject/dvm_doc/src/master/lottery.basWe welcome any questions you may have and look forward to seeing your feedback and innovations.
We request that feedback/discussions is submitted in Dero forum (linked below) or in #stargate in discord.
https://forum.dero.io/t/dero-stargate-testnet-discussions/888Thank you for your continued support. Let us begin to #BUIDL together.
Discord —
https://discord.gg/68XDXAWTelegram —
https://t.me/DeroProjectGroupTwitter —
https://twitter.com/deroproject
