The 3D Chain is an evolution of Blockchain protocol, built from the ground up to provide a strong foundation for Nexus and other future projects using the technology. Using an unique implementation of three consensus channels, Nexus transforms the blockchain into a 3D process called the 3 dimensional chain. By adapting to transaction volume, using trust to secure the network, and weighting transactions to determine the most efficient use of resources, the 3DC increases decentralization and limits the influence exerted by any one system. The 3DC protocol organically scales to meet network computational demands, which means the network gets faster as more nodes join the system.
The history of Nexus
Nexus started as a vision of improving the Bitcoin protocol and at the same time cleaning the cryptosphere from scam coins.
Lead Developer Colin Cantrell (Viz) studied the foundations of the Bitcoin Core code, understanding how Satoshi structured Bitcoin and identifying opportunities for improvement. At this time, the altcoin market was being flooded with scams and pump and dump schemes where coins pushing promises, buzz words, and the allure of quick profits were used to swindle BTC from communities. Fom Viz’s vision, Coinshield (CSD) was born.
The first CSD block was mined on September 23, 2014 at 16:20 UTC-7, and the project soon-to-be named Nexus was live. At that point, the project had one channel of mining: a Prime Mining channel (CPU). On October 23, 2014, the Hashing (GPU) channel was launched as the second proof channel. The blocks included a first-ever subsidy, where a portion from each mined block would be sent to one of 13 developer accounts and another portion would be sent to one of 13 exchange accounts. On January 24, 2015, CSD was listed on Bittrex Exchange.
Shortly afterwards, Viz drafted the first whitepaper that outlined how the network would work to recycle and merge the economies and communities of these scam coins. The goal was to help the people in those communities, bring them into the CSD community, and at the same time help clean up the cryptosphere. The exchange accounts would be used to merge these economies by exchanging the coins for a portion of CSD.
On April 11, 2015, Viz announced the intention to rebrand to Nexus. Discussion pursued about the ticker symbol, and NIRO was chosen to represent Nexus. On July 24, 2015, Nexus version 2.0 was released with Nexus Proof of State (nPOS) and the introduction of the Trust Network. This laid the foundation for the broader scope of Nexus.
At the beginning of September 2015, Videlicet revealed his identity as Colin Cantrell. In October 2015, a more formal team was formed to promote development, build the community, and market Nexus. The ticker symbol was revised to NXS. Discussions on Nexus’s direction led to the decision to abandon the recycling and merging that was part of the Coinshield project. The technical work required to implement the merging was done, but with the explosion in the number of new cryptos, the process would have had little impact. Therefore, Nexus began to develop into something much more expansive. The project had a whole new direction.
Nexus still seeks to help carry on Satoshi’s dream of decentralization, and as such continues to work on improving the Blockchain protocol. Some of how it works, its goals, specifications, and features are described further in this post. For a more complete explanation, please read the Nexus whitepaper.
Nexus: Under the hood
Decentralized Decentralization
Consensus
Nexus uses 3 consensus channels to maximize decentralization and provide fast, secure transactions. Each channel has an independent difficulty algorithm, amongst other checks and balances, to prevent a single channel from monopolizing block production and compromising the security of the network. Nexus channels include a Prime channel (CPU Mining), a Hashing channel (GPU Mining), and Nexus Proof of Holding (nPOH).
Trust-based Proof-of-Holding
Nexus takes the proof-of-stake system developed by Peercoin, and combines it with a Trust-based weighting system to create the Proof-of-Holding consensus mechanism. Nodes receive a Trust rating that is established by their contributions to the network, which increases over time. Nodes with greater Trust are granted an increased minting rate, which increases from 0.5% to 3% within one year, the longer you build Trust on the network.
Security
Nexus aims to be one of the most secure blockchains in the world by increasing decentralization, and implementing quantum resistance. Using multiple consensus channels greatly reduces the risk of a 51% attack, as an attacker would need to control all 3 channels. A set of checks and balances prevents an individual channel from being able to compromise the entire network.
Nexus uses a combination of SHA3 hashing algorithms combined with 571 bit private keys and 512/1024 bit proof of work, to make Nexus one of the world’s leading quantum-resistant blockchains.
Furthermore, Nexus is developing an evolving key signature scheme to keep an account’s public keys obscured even when making transactions. This is made possible by moving away from addresses based on public key hashes, and implementing a new system called Signature Chains.
Scalability
While other blockchains consider larger block sizes or off-chain payment channels in an effort to increase transaction throughput, the Nexus 3DC proposes another solution, allowing Nexus to scale completely on-chain.
Transaction processing is distributed across multiple channels working synergistically to increase transaction throughput as resources increase. Individual channels verify transactions, consolidate verified transactions into Merkle trees, and add finished blocks onto the blockchain. The Unified Time protocol enables transaction processing, trust locks, and block locks to be consistent throughout time. The potential of Nexus 3DC is limited only by node count and represents the most energy-efficient consensus system to date.
Spaced-Based Blockchain
As decentralized as blockchain technology strives to be, it nevertheless remains dependant on traditional infrastructure. By combining the decentralized blockchain software, satellite and ground based mesh networks, and a large team of passionate people, Nexus is focused on gaining a high degree of autonomy from external influences. By placing our own communication infrastructure in space, the network won’t be susceptible to government jurisdiction (similar to international waters).
Nexus is actively building relationships within the aerospace industry to allow for the hardware infrastructure to be compatible with its transaction system.
Specifications
Proof-of-work hashing algorithm
Keccak-1600, Skein-1024 and SHA3-512
Consensus channels
Prime (CPU), Hashing (GPU), and Nexus Proof of Holding (nPOH)
Initial Supply
78 Million over a 10 year distribution period
Current Supply
http://nexusoft.io/platform/statistics/supply.php or http://nxsorbitalscan.com/ , https://nexplorer.co.uk/ , http://nxs.efficienthash.com/
Maximum Annual Inflation
nPOH: Up to 3% annually; 2% after initial distribution is complete
Prime and Hashing Minting Channels: 1% annually after initial distribution is complete
Block Time
300 seconds for Hashing channel
300 seconds for Prime mining channel
60 seconds for nPOH
Block Reward
Prime and Hashing Minting Channels: The effective reward is established by the reserve balances. These reserves have a decayed amount deposited every time interval of one minute. If the balance is below a given threshold, the reward value will be based on a time’s value of a decayed amount. This means that the reward will be given based on how long it was taken to create the block. This prevents the reserves from being depleted as large amounts of computing power jump on and off the mining network.
nPOH Minting Channel: The effective reward is an annual interest rate that ranges between 0.5 and 3.0% annually.
Minting Difficulty
The miner’s difficulty is calculated by a proportion generated from the time it took to create the block, and the target time. The target time is calculated by the NXS Reserves working to deflate the difficulty if the reserves go over a threshold. This is designed to maintain transaction processing despite a loss in computing power on said channel, by aiding in the reduction of the difficulty to a more suitable level.
NEXUS TEAM
Colin Cantrell(Videlicet),Chief Architect & Embassy Board of Directors, colin@nexusearth.com
Kierre Reeg: Executive Director
Jacynda Smith: Embassy Board of Directors
Colin Forbes: Chief Financial Officer
Brian Smith: Developer
Wendy Katz: Marketing Manager
Brian Vena: Director of Business Development
Nelson Sparks: Director of Operations
John Saviano: Creative Manager
Dionna Bailey: Nexus Ambassador
Mike Casey: Community Hub Manager
Alex El-Nemer: Global Partnerships & International Relations
Gale Holman: Controller
Ashley Swazey: Executive Assistant
Andrew Krohn: Media Production & Marketing
Nexus Development Team Email Address: team@nexusearth.com
Nexus Development Team NXS Address: 2Qpe2rDTMUKBq4evL9im61SBj3dAJ4H3u1SiVjYbSdwYPJy5NSP
Nexus Development Team BTC Address: 1My2GsdknNxs2x8BLPfzAQUQ1oGVouBi6Y
Wallet downloads:
Recent database files:
Oracle Database
Lower Level Database (LLD)
Block explorer
NEXUS MINING
For tutorials on Nexus GPU and CPU mining, please visit:
Prime Channel [Miners Created by Videlicet, Optimized by Supercomputing]
Prime Solo Miners:Source Code [Github]Windows Binary x86Windows Binary x64
Nexus Mining Pool: nexusminingpool.com:9549 http://nexusminingpool.com/
Prime Pool Miners:
[url=https://github.com/Nexusoft/PrimePoolMiner]Source Code [Github]Windows Binary x86Windows Binary x64Hashing (GPU) SK-1024 ChannelGPU pool -
nxspool.ru Also has the last pool miner download on site.
GPU pool created by a.kubrakov with GPU pool miner created by Nobody( slackuser).
[Miners Created by Wolf, Windows Miner Modified by Paulscreen]
Windows 64 bit AMD Solo MinerLinux AMD Solo Miner Source Code[Miners Created by Bitslapper, Optimized by djm34 and Mumus]
SK-Miner [NVIDIA] WindowsSK-Miner [NVIDIA] SourceSK-Miner [Github]
Source code:
Markets:
Nexus on Coin Market Cap
Nexus Wiki:
Find out more details of the Nexus protocol including technological advancements
Social media:
www.nexusearth.comNEXUS InstagramNEXUS Discord
Join Us on SLACKREDDIT r/nexusearthIRC #nexusearthYOU, ME, AND BTC PODCAST
Nexus improves upon the Bitcoin protocol:
Current features:
3 consensus channels: Every channel reinforces the others to prevent 51% attacks on one channel, forcing attacker across multiple channels.
Hashing:Nexus uses a combination of different hashes, including Keccak-1600, Skein-1024, SK-576, SK-512, and SK-256.
SK-1024: Using Skein-1024 and Keccak-1600 for GPU PoW to produce a 1024 bit output hash used for the block hash providing the highest security.
Prime: Searching for Dense Prime Clusters as CPU PoW, finding these clusters of numbers that are ~308 digits to verify prime density in large numbers.
Keys: 571 Bit Private Keys compared to 256 bit in other currencies. Using NID_sect571r1 as the algorithm.
Difficulty: Calculated with time overlaps and true % over bounds, using weighted block average over past 5 blocks.
LLP: Lower Level Protocol as a template protocol to allow any protocol to be created with ease without need for repeated network programming.
Core LLP: Protocol responsible for time keeping as an advancement to NTP, keeping clocks on the network synchronized within a few seconds of one another. Maximum clock drift for Nexus is 10 seconds.
Mining LLP: Dedicated Mining Protocol outside of JSON-RPC Server to allow the greatest performance for mining. Protocol can handle 5k + connections allowing solo mining of any magnitude.
No Reward Halving: Rewards are calculated along an exponential decay curve to slowly reduce the value of each block rather than shock both miners and the market with block reward halving which acts as a rudimentary decay model.
Released Reserves: Decayed amounts are deposited into the Reserves for each channel, preventing a miner from being able to mint more than the projected amount while difficulty is compensating to their amount of computing power.
Fractional Rewards: When reserves are below given thresholds, the mining reward is then based off of the time it took to create a block preventing a miner from ever being able to deplete the reserves.
Decentralized Checkpoints: Every 60 minutes, the Nexus protocol automatically creates a checkpoint. This prevents blocks from being created or modified dated prior to this checkpoint, thus protecting the chain from malicious attempts to introduce an alternate blockchain.
Trust Keys: The minting rate increases the longer a node secures the blockchain, incentivizing nodes to actively stake. This increases the difficulty for successfully attacking the network, as nodes with greater Trust are more likely to find new blocks.
Nexus Proof of Holding: Nexus’s Proof of Holding system is based upon the Peercoin protocol, completely recoded and redesigned from scratch, utilizing an efficiency threshold, trust keys, and logarithmic weights to create the fairest and most stable staking system to date.
Developer Commission: The Developer Fund fuels ongoing development and is sourced by a 1.5% commission per block mined, which will slowly increase to 2.5% after 10 years. This brings all the benefits of development funding without the associated risks and limits the control which can exerted by the developer account.
The Ambassador (renamed from Exchange) keys are funded by a 20% commission per block reward. These keys are mainly used to pay for marketing, and producing and launching the Nexus satellites.
Planned features:
Reversible Transactions: Transaction can be reversed if below expiration time by sending transaction void to the network.
Two-Way Signatures: Receiver of transaction will be required to sign to prove ownership of txout before it will be processed. This will prevent burning coins by accident.
Trust Network: Using Trust Keys and more sophistication in Checkpoints will create a Trust Network in which nodes will be given the opportunity to vote on checkpoints and blocks to agree on set blockchain. This will prevent a rogue node from trying to manipulate the network.
Sync-less Wallets: Using the Trust Network as a backbone and the LLP for the protocol, will allow wallets to remain sync-less by processing transactions in the Trust Network.
HTML5 Wallet: Probably coming sooner rather then later, essentially building up a clean simple HTML5 wallet using qt web server. Will have all the great visuals that HTML5/CSS3 provides. Most likely coming before transaction features to have a cleaner GUI to integrate more functionality into.
Double Spend Protection: Using input locking and checking on reorganizations, can prevent a transaction from ever being able to be overwritten by a longer blockchain after a checkpoint eliminating any threat of 51% attacks.
LLL Integration: Once the Library including Static and Dynamic Databases is finished, next will be integrating LLP, LLD, and LLS with possible LLE for encrypted communications and high efficiencies in protocol responses and data storage.
UPDATES TO BE INCLUDED IN FUTURE RELEASES
Updates Planned for the Full 0.3.0 Release include:
1. LLD database integration.
2. Trust Key Depreciation Update
3. Many new RPC commands for increased utility and Block Explorer performance.
4. LLP Updates.
5. Reworking of the nPOS system for increased difficulty.
