ThunderCore promises to become a scalable blockchain that enables mass adoption of dApps. In the following, I will have a closer look at this upcoming project seeking to become at least twice as fast as Zilliqa.
Thunder™ aims to become a secure, high-performance blockchain. Thanks to its full compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts, dApps can be migrated to Thunder, which allows them to significantly and immediately increase their performance. The proposed scalability enables transactions to be confirmed almost instantly within less than a second. This can be accomplished by adding a so-called “fast-path” that is situated on top of the standard blockchain ("slow-chain"). If the fast path is congested for whatever reason, transactions will fall back to the slow chain to secure that the network remains functional.
Financial and other transactions are currently being conducted by centralized entities, for instance VISA. Cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH have ignited the vision of a more decentralized system that provides a higher transparency, fairness, and security. However, current approaches in this area struggle with scalability and low throughput. For example, only one dApp (Cryptokitties) was enough to take a heavy toll on the Ethereum network, resulting in significantly increased transaction fees and very high confirmation times. The reason for this lies in the fact that major cryptocurrencies are flooding their whole network with all the transactions of the chain.
Thunder seeks to build a bridge between a centralized and decentralized network that can utilize the best of both worlds. As such, it seeks to create a fully decentralized blockchain that is able to leverage the performance of centralized systems. They initially plan to use Ethereum’s blockchain as the underlying slow chain of the network. This means that they consider the existing speed and throughput of ETH as super slow. Later scalability is accomplished by allowing others to create dedicated Accelerators.
The team believes that Thunder "is the simplest, fastest, most expressive and secure blockchain solution out there".
Such a bold claim stemming from credible and experienced scientists should not be underestimated. (One of their team members co-wrote the very first academic research paper on BTC.)
The increased speed can be accomplished by using Accelerators designed to bundle transactions into micro-blocks. Once such a micro-block that contains numerous transactions is confirmed, all the transactions that are contained within the block are considered as confirmed. This solution prevents the entire network from being flooded by all transactions of the chain. Even more so, the confirmation of a transaction will only require two communication rounds.
Thunder's proposed solution combines an asynchronous fast path with a fallback. Competitors such as Zilliqa utilize classic consensus methods with an asynchronous recovery path. Classical solutions are more prone to corruption and require more voting rounds, which makes them less fast. Even more so, they are more difficult to implement and to deploy on a large scale.
Instead of completely redesigning the consensus model, Thunder simply seeks to accelerate existing blockchains.
Thunder is a unique solution to a big problem in the crypto sphere. Compared to competitors, the approach provides a higher transaction speed while maintaining smart contract support. The success of Thunder will largely depend on the team members ability to build a community around the project. Similarly, only time can tell whether they are able to translate their academic approach into a viable real-world solution. From the information available, this project is very interesting.
This is not financial advice. I'm just sharing my opinion. Always do your own research.
