The winning blockchain stack
Combining Orbs scalability, low fees and isolation between virtual chains with a first-grade developer experience, online IDE and smart contracts in familiar languages. Developers get the perfect mix of performance, cost, security and ease of use.
Virtual Chains
Virtual chains provide the feel and benefit of a dedicated blockchain while running on top of a shared physical node infrastructure, enjoying the security and decentralization provided by the shared environment as well as the isolation and customization provided by virtualization
Consensus on transactions of different virtual chains can be run independently, are sharded and run concurrently on separate resources. The ledgers of virtual chains can also be maintained independently and their compute can be performed in parallel. Moreover, the isolation of state for each virtual chain reduces the memory requirements of its virtual machine.
Advantages:
- Each app operates its own virtual chain with inherent sharding
- App developers choose their virtual chain’s consensus protocol and governance model
- Autonomous governance and flexibility
- Isolation from congestion in other virtual chains
- Ability to start with a private instance and later switch to public without having to migrate blockchains
Randomized Proof-of-Stake
The Orbs consensus model, Randomized Proof-of-Stake (RPOS), is both secure and fast. Small random committees are chosen out of a large validator set for each round of consensus. The large validator set and randomization ensure security and decentralization while the small committees allow consensus to be fast and highly scalable.
The Orbs implementation of this model is called Helix – a Byzantine fault tolerant algorithm which relies on the Orbs Proof-of-Stake ecosystem where Guardians and Delegators use stake to elect Validators.
Advantages:
- Highly scalable to thousands of transactions per second
- Speed is maintained and security increases as the number of nodes increase
- Each virtual chain can choose its consensus model “flavor” – optimized for latency, throughput, fairness and cost-savings
- Byzantine fault tolerance
Cross-chain Interoperability
Orbs smart contracts provide seamless cross-chain access to Ethereum state under consensus. This allows apps running on Orbs to leverage the power of Ethereum directly without leaving the platform.
An example of this technology is autonomous swap, a secure mechanism that allows developers to move part of the base-layer assets (ex: ERC-20 tokens) to run on Orbs for their utility while keeping other parts on the base-layer for trade.
Advantages:
- Avoid painful token migrations when moving between blockchains
- Developers can use their base-layer’s token ecosystem (wallets and exchanges)
- Tokens can be kept on a Proof-of-Work base-layer for added security without the performance and cost drawbacks
- Take advantage of the liquidity of the base-layer while using Orbs’ scalable production environment
