Besides the upgrades in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other established blockchains, there are many exciting new projects coming along and trying to build the blockchain of the future.
We briefly mentioned Tezos. It is described as a generic self-amending cryptographic ledger. This means that it deploys a decentralized consensus mechanism, not only for transaction validation and updating the state of its blockchain, but also on how its protocol and network are governed and evolve over time. To do this, it plans to deploy a delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm and to split its blockchain protocol into three distinct layers:
- A network protocol in charge of broadcasting transactions across its network
- A transaction protocol, which defines the criteria that make a transaction valid
- A consensus protocol that specifies how a consensus is reached around a unique chain of transactions
This should render the governance of the Tezos ecosystem efficient and allow it to evolve and update frequently to incorporate any features considered suitable by its community of stakeholders. In this way, Tezos can potentially include all the newest and best features developed in the blockchain space at any given time, and keep itself at the forefront of technological innovation. Such features may include new types of consensus algorithms, privacy features, on-chain or off-chain scalability, interoperability solutions, and so on.
Tezos is being designed also as a smart contract platform that allows for decentralized applications, such as Ethereum, but it uses a different programming language, and aims to bring some improvements upon existing platforms also in that area. Its mainnet was launched in September 2018.
Polkadot, led by Gavin Wood, who was one of the founders and Chief Technology Officer (or CTO) of Ethereum, focuses on resolving interoperability among blockchains. Polkadot aims to provide network infrastructure for interconnecting different blockchains. They want to build backbone infrastructure, called a relay-chain that connects other side chains, referred to as para-chains. Such side chains or para-chains can be other existing blockchain networks such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Hyperledger, among others, as shown in the following diagram:
Since the primary objective of Polkadot is to provide cross-chain interoperability with other blockchains, it is not envisaged to support customized, complex smart contracts for decentralized applications in the way Ethereum does, for example. The aim is to keep the relay-chain as simple as possible, so its operation is optimized to provide efficient interconnectivity. Polkadot is expected to come online in 2019.
Cosmos, developed by Tendermint, is another notable long-awaited project focused on building cross-chain interconnectivity. It uses decentralized exchange technology and its mainnet was launched in 2018.
Aion is yet another new project trying to build an interconnected blockchain with bridges to external networks. They want to implement a novel, hybrid, delegated Poof-of-Stake or Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, building on top of a lot of research and development done so far in the industry. They leverage concepts from Ethereum, Java, machine learning, and other fields of modern computer science in their aim to deliver the next generation blockchain technology.
Aion partners with two other prominent projects focused on building interconnected networks of blockchains, ICON and Wanchain, both from Asia. Wanchain also implements privacy features using ring signatures, the technology we presented with Monero. These projects draw parallels to the SWIFT system for international payments where each country has its own currency system, but multiple banks from any country can connect and interoperate through the SWIFT network.
Zilliqa, another exciting new project, aims to build a blockchain implementing sharding, the scalability solution Ethereum is exploring now. It also provides smart contract programming capabilities compatible with Ethereum's Solidity language.
Another new project that is trying to implement sharding is RChain. They are building a smart contracts and decentralized applications platform with a virtual machine and programming language, leveraging concepts from Ethereum and other recent innovations. RChain is also building a Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol similar to Ethereum's Casper.
Cardano and EOS are two other notable projects trying to resolve the limitations of existing blockchains all at once, tackling scalability, governance, interoperability and so on. They are both based on the delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and enable smart contracts. They are currently at different stages of their development and carry high expectations by the blockchain community.
The pipeline of ambitious new projects is very long and covering them all is beyond our scope.