MONET: Mobile Ad Hoc Blockchains

The Idea

The idea of Monet is to build an architecture that would allow creating blockchains on demand using mobile devices. To put it simply, users of mobile devices will be able to create ad hoc blockchains so that they can coordinate themselves without trusted third parties. Blockchain here will act as a mechanism for ensuring authenticity of each user. Monet will make this process seamless and fast. Why would anyone need ad hoc blockchains? First things that come to mind are secure messaging, gathering teams to work on a project or any peer-to-peer economic activity.

The Technology

So, in order to enable users to create these blockchains, Monet will employ Babble, its pluggable consensus mechanism, and MonetHub, a blockchain that is always online and provides infrastructure for the network apps. In my previous article, we looked at the so-called "gossip protocol". Babble will also use its iteration. Upon initiation of a blockchain in Monet, the initiators will create a list of users who will use the blockchain. Later on they can update the list dynamically. Each blockchain will live as long as the network app runs, but the blockchain data, including the proof of everything that happened on it, can be stored.

MonetHub provides infrastructure for applications that can be deployed on Monet. It consists of nodes run by validators involved in the proof-of-stake mechanism. Anyone who has Monet tokens can become a validator having the same weight in the consensus mechanism.

The Token

Monet's token is called TENOM and, as mentioned above, can be used for running a node. Initially, only the 20 largest stakers can become validators in MonetHub but later this amount will grow to 100. By “largest” here Monet implies not the largest by the token amount but the largest by the support from delegators, who may choose to back up a certain validator. The later determines the commission rate they seek to get from staking and thus motivate delegators to support them. Misbehaving validators' tokens are taken away and go to Monet's reserve. In addition to the commission, validators are also entitled to a portion of the annual token emission. This effectively means that the token supply for TENOM is not finite. Monet will issue additional tokens and distribute half of them among the validators and another half among the community members contributing to the development of the ecosystem.

Participants of Monet's blockchains will utilize TENOM in order to access smart contracts, log transactions and connect between various blockchains. In addition, TENOM can be used as a means of payment within applications deployed on MonetHub.

At the time of writing no detail have been published regarding the token metrics and crowdsale dates.

The Team and Advisors

In general, the team dos not have shiny experience at major companies, which, of course, doesn’t mean that they are incapable of achieving their goals.

CEO Martin Arrivets worked as developer for two British companies Clearmatics and RTE Network. Co-founder and CFO Giacomo Puri Purini is the graduate of Columbia University and, according to his LinkedIn profile, this is his first public position. Software Developer Kevin Jones has many years of experience in the development role with such companies as Selex ES and Clearmatics.

On the top of the advisor team are Mark Stuart Day, an author on the topic of Bitcoin, visiting lecturer at MIT and the owner of more than thirty patents; and Mauro Martino, the head of IBM's Visual AI Lab and former researcher and research associate at Harvard.

Conclusion

Monet is certainly an interesting project with clear use cases that can stimulate the mass adoption of its ecosystem. The team has experience in software development and seems to have clear understanding of the current problems and limitations of blockchain. I wouldn't call it stellar in terms we are used to (like tens of years of experience in Facebook or Microsoft), yet they clearly know what they want to achieve, and I really like how they approach their community. The whitepaper is technical but very easy to understand for non-tech people, which I also admire. I believe that Monet can become a future for building mobile applications without the necessity to rely on centralized servers. This is definitely going to be one of the projects I will follow closely in the coming months.