A recent announcement from cryptocurrency newcomer COTI (short for the Currency of the Internet) has interesting and perhaps industry-altering ramifications. The company has the potential to launch cryptocurrency to a point where it is capable of providing payment services across the globe in a far quicker and more reliable fashion than the current fiat system.
COTI has launched a full service, an end-to-end payment alternative. It is based on Proof-of-Trust (PoT), and is called Trustchain protocol. Trustchain is a solution for several commonly cited blockchain issues such as scalability and transaction fees.
In order to understand the value of Trustchain and its PoT validation system, it is important to understand cryptocurrency’s history based on the blockchain, as well as emerging trends that emphasize the need to solve these ongoing issues surrounding the use of cryptocurrency as a large scale payment system.
Why Trust?
Trust is one of the primary founding principles of cryptocurrency.
In an effort to combat the neglectful and sometimes shady business practices of “trusted” third parties, notorious throughout traditional banking systems in the fiat market, Satoshi and friends developed bitcoin on a new and unique blockchain platform, around the proof-of-work (PoW) validation concept.
PoW performed perfectly in concept, and even for a time, in practice. However, the high energy required to solve and validate the complex equations of a PoW blockchain proved prohibitive. Energy costs were killing the planet, and the time it took for transactions to validate and post made users want to run screaming from the notion of using Bitcoin as a daily payment option.
As the coin grew, transactions became slower. Another solution was needed.
Rather than another solution, blockchain developers burned through a litany of them in their quest to replace PoW with a more scalable option.
It started with Proof-of-Stake (PoS), a consensus system which again started well, but struggled to move beyond the reality that with validation occurring based on the amount individuals were vested in the currency. Humans have a strong natural instinct to protect their own interest, and PoS was no different.
Next came Proof-of-Authority (PoA), another consensus-based system where identity became the validator through a small cohort of individuals who were pre-approved to validate transactions and blocks. Like PoS, PoA requires low computational power, and very little communication between nodes.
At this time, data structures began changing to meet the rapidly advancing needs of the industry, and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) came into use.
COTI as Trust Solution
Shortly thereafter, COTI and their original blockchain PoT protocol emerged.
At first glance, a network of trust appears to be the ultimate consensus validation system. Upon further exploration, it is indeed a technology that has enormous potential for a variety of users and applications, as it meets the emergent needs of blockchain users, particularly increased scalability, but also security, flexibility, and e-commerce and POS payment options.
Aptly-named COTI was designed and launched specifically to meet payment needs previously unresolved by existing blockchain solutions. Their end-to-end solution is a well designed proof of trust (PoT) blockchain consensus with individual user Trust Scores, driven by smart contracts and built in a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) data structure, capable of the flexibility and speed neccesary to drive blockchain transactions to the next level: a level of mainstream use.
The foundation of the COTI Trustchain premise is each user’s Trust Score. User Trust Score ratings are what determines how quickly they can confirm a transaction.
The Trustchain algorithm was also developed with security in mind to avoid security risks like network spamming and double spend attacks, with a solid appeals system in place for network users in the event of fraud or suspected fraud. Their proprietary double spend prevention node cluster system (DSP) automatically identify, flag, and refuse any attempts at double spending.
However, the most powerful aspect of the platform is its broad range of use cases. Entities ranging from enterprises, to decentralized payment networks, merchants, stable coins, developers, and governments alike can use the robust Trustchain system for rapid, scalable
The company’s recent announcement of their Alphanet protocol confirms that they are moving toward sustainability as a viable solution. Looking ahead to the promises and potential of the COTI platform, its DAG-based protocol and stable coin/decentralized payment network offers the cryptocurrency space strong options for future mainstream scaling.
