BOScoin Newsletter; Feb. 26th, 2018
BOS Platform Development updates
Consensus and Trust Contracts Specifications
A lot of work was put into the creation of the specification of the Consensus Algorithm and Trust Contracts, although this may sound trivial, we'd like to stress that we are not just a project that will copy blockchain code, refine it and release it - we are building a completely new blockchain platform from the ground up. Understanding that there would be some that would think "You're really just tweaking Stellar" - we'd like to advise that we are using Stellar's consensus algorithm as a basis for our mFBA. This means revisiting the concept behind it, optimizing it based on theoretical research, process and operational analysis, tests, and fit to our environment - and this is only the consensus component - we will need to integrate this into the wider BOS Platform!
As mentioned last week, we have broken up the development of the Platform into Iterations, these Iterations will specifically focus on the Consensus and Trust Contract components.
Last Friday marked the last day of Iteration 4, and below is a summary of the outcomes:
Consensus
The objective of the consensus component is to determine the ultimate quorum configuration for our Platform.
The development team created a model able to determine whether the quorum configuration of our network is healthy or not in relation to consensus verification. This required interrogation into the fundamentals of Federated Byzantine Algorithm in relation to safety, liveliness and fault tolerance, then translating that into the model.
We are happy with how the model satisfies safety and liveliness, but we wish to further explore fault tolerance of nodes and the network - this will be one of our focuses for the next iteration. In addition for the next Iteration, we will:
Further our model with fault tolerance and safety verification (what is the difference between Safety and safety verification?)
Explore other consensus algorithms in the view of optimizing our BOS Platform (ongoing)
Investigate consensus with:
Multiple ballots
Single client - messages to one node
Multiple clients - messages to multiple nodes
Message scheduling
Trust Contract
This iteration of the Trust Contract stream of work focused on the architecture design and integration components into the blockchain such as the Message, Account, Consensus and Storage objects.
Next iteration will focus on setting up the environment for the team to further work to write the Contracts - and in the future we will incorporate OWL and TAL aspects to develop the Trust Contract.
To read more about our Trust Contracts, please visit our Medium articles: Trust Contract Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
(HYPERLINK TO:
https://medium.com/@boscoin/smart-contracts-trust-contracts-part-1-83f12dec7641 https://medium.com/@boscoin/smart-contracts-trust-contracts-part-2-6b9dbadfdf98 https://medium.com/@boscoin/smart-contracts-trust-contracts-part-3-6cf76bf5882e)
Platform Specifications
The specifications work the team are working on breaks down the Consensus and Trust Contracts into specific elements. The level that it dives into will essentially map out all the coding required for those aspects.
As mentioned before, we are keeping development behind closed doors, but we will give you a sneak peek into the work:
This is just a excerpt of the the specification work which includes elements such as:
Hash Key & Signature; Multi-sig; Inflation; Node State; Confirmations; Acceptance; Quorum Banning; Validation; Public Membership.
Meet the Team
The past week, we had a team attend various events in the US, including the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain Conference in Dallas; a Dallas BOScoin Meetup; a San Francisco BOScoin Meetup; and a meeting with Franz Inc.
(Hyperlinks:
https://www.bitcoinsuperconference.com/ https://www.meetup.com/BOScoin-Dallas-Fort-Worth-TX/events/246652494/ https://www.meetup.com/BOScoin-San-Francisco-CA/events/247090403/ https://franz.com/)
Dallas: The Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain Conference
There were many chances for the community to hear and discuss about the BOS Platform with a an estimated 400-500 attendees approaching our BOScoin booth, and our visionary CTO Yezune Choi presenting at a session in the evening of the first day!
Of the many good conversations we had with the community, a lot of interest was focused on our Public Financing element of the Platform - Public Financing is a alternative way to seek funding for your project, instead of conducting your own ICO, or going down the Venture Capital or Investment Banking channel. our platform will use Trust Contracts to run this to try and transform people towards a Programmable Economy.
Dallas & San Francisco BOScoin Meetups
Both the Dallas and San Francisco BOScoin Meetups were held in similar fashion where we ran these in collaboration with our business partner Finger (HYPERLINK:
https://www.finger.co.kr).
Finger is a solid company with years of experience in financial IT and is looking to set up a P2P Exchange where BOScoin will be the first on it when released.
At the meetup both BOScoin and Finger presented our products, San Francisco were also fortunate enough to hear us provide a brief overview of blockchain technology and Bitcoin; the session was interactive overall with casual questions in between talks.
At all the events, we were happy to receive so much interest in our Public Financing component of the Platform, where we were even engaged with the community 40mins post the event in some cases answering questions on the very topic!
