– Watch the complete update, hosted on Swarmcast, here: Saito Summer 13

We’re thrilled to announce that Saito will be listed on LCX Exchange next week! This listing will open up access to European markets with a Euro trading pair, making it easier than ever for that community to participate.

We’re also highlighting our sound approach to dealing with exchanges: rather than relying on high-cost listings that very often pursue short term goals at the cost of the community, we look for exchanges willing to think long-term on the potential of Saito and that will benefit the entire community. LCX matches our values on that front, and we are happy to be working with them and hope the community feels the same and demonstrates that appreciation.

Community Engagement

This listing includes a suite of exchange promotions and community engagement activities, and we encourage everyone to join in! We’re looking forward to celebrating the LCX listing with you and hope you’ll participate in the promotional events surrounding this launch.

Join us in maximizing the listing’s impact by spreading the word, engaging on social media, and sharing your Saito enthusiasm. Be sure register and check out Saito on LCX Exchange.

Connect in Bangkok

Finally, for those attending DevConflict in Bangkok, don’t miss the chance to connect with us in person! Whether you’re a developer, community member, or just curious to learn more, we’d love to chat and share ideas. David knows where all the good restaurants are, so get in touch if you’re in town!

Get Involved

Thank you for being part of the journey! Be sure to show your support on X and participate in our partnership with LCX. Join us on Red Square to stay engaged and informed as we build the future of decentralized technology.

Technical Updates

• WASM Integration: Significant focus on integrating Rust via WASM and creating a JavaScript wrapper for the resulting binary blob to connect with the Saito client. This enhances performance and efficiency.
• Blog Module & App Store: A new module is under development to port the existing blog posts to Saito Web 3. This leverages our archive nodes and enables applications to verify content and publishing dates via the $Saito Blockchain. These features will also be used for the creation of decentralized app stores.
• ATR “Turbo Mode”: Team is getting ready to spin-up ATR on mainnet with accelerated parameters to speed up testing of this vital consensus feature. Diagnostics can be performed at a higher rate than previously expected, potentially putting us even further ahead on the roadmap through the coming months.
• React UI Toolkit Demo: A React UI demo is being built to aid developers accustomed to the popular web framework and better integrate it into the Saito development kit. This will help legacy web devs transition more easily to Saito.
• Transaction Message Stability: We’re enhancing the tracking system on pending transactions sent P2P, preventing erroneous duplicate actions upon browser refresh or wallet reload. This is particularly beneficial for gaming applications. This addresses issues like failed transactions due to poor internet connectivity or power outages.

The post Saito Summer 13 – LCX Listing and Tech Update appeared first on Saito.

Roadmap

The First Era of Saito saw the development of the Rust Client to place Saito’s most crucial consensus code on a stable and performant foundation (one of rock, not sand).

In Second Era of roadmap – The Dawn of Persistence, the goal has been generating organic transaction volume by building a rich and functional developer and user ecosystem. Apps are both demonstrations of a new paradigm of decentralized PKI, but also genuinely valuable to users.

Data Persistence (read more below) is now a primary focus. We’ve already done much of the work with Archive Nodes to allow peers to connect to the Saito Network and send and receive the data necessary for a rich experience without a server. Work going forward will center around improving those tools.

These core updates to the node software may mean that updates are less frequent and less flashy, but nonetheless and perhaps even more important than the litany of application and feature reveals which have taken place during Saito Summer so far.

Coming off the back of Dynamic Modules, the prospect for Saito application developers today is rich: build and publish an application that functions without the need for you or your users to interact with any central infrastructure, and which is automatically monetizable via Saito’s revolutionary fee system.

Saito Developer Experience

Progress

Saito apps but also to support the wide range of features that will make Web3 more than just marketing – we believe the Saito blockchain and the Web3 services atop it are the foundation for a new way to PKI and a better internet.

Feedback and collaboration with outside developers has led to direct improvements to the Saito development experience. We continue to streamline features which make the transition to Web3 development easier: One of these many features, upgraded recently, is the ability to easily save, load and send peers transaction data. This upgrade is largely responsible for the more seamless than ever P2P experience on Red Square.

The end result of all these tools is a the ability to create P2P networked apps that operate without any central servers. The Saito-Lite-Rust node offers methods such as the storage functionality mentioned above built-in. It’s not always easy transitioning to a Web3 mindset, but when it all clicks the Saito Developer Kit is fully equipped with all the tools you need.

Devs can build a standard web application and then turn it into a true P2P app running on a lite node in the user’s browser without too much trouble. With Dynamic Modules, developers don’t even have to run infrastructure.

Come Build

If you’re interested in building an application like this, Saito is your best option. We’ve completely revamped our Wiki with better documentation and several up-to-date tutorials.

The team is also happy to offer direct support in getting developers up to speed working with Saito. A big part of this stage in the roadmap is understanding the challenges developers face when moving to the Real Web3 paradigm on Saito.

Applications

Red Square

Red Square has gone from a technical demo of P2P (not centralized, not federated – but even more decentralized) social media with a myriad of usability blemishes, to a smooth and fun platform that often distracts us from our work.

During that time, Red Square has also become more decentralized, relying less and less on any central node and capable of providing the aforementioned experience by connecting directly to peers and not being reliant on some central server that privatizes your content and others’ access to it.

And despite giving users more autonomy and freedom, we’ve also developed moderation tools which give every individual the control to completely dictate for themselves what content they want to see. The average user adopts the node’s moderate content policy, but any user can opt out, customize, and share their own moderation policies; since everything is P2P, this level of customization works well even in the early days of this technology.

We are currently developing an integration between our Archive Node tools and User Profiles such that users are able to act as repositories for their own data and data they want to share. In this way, retweeting posts, adding friends and other actions become more than just symbolic – they represent real ways that data flows between peers and puts the power of the platform firmly in the hands of the users.

While these techniques are helping us build an exciting and fun P2P social media network today, they also form the basis of PKI networks of the tomorrow suitable as the base layer of a new class of applications which can’t be centrally captured.

App Store

Dynamic Modules (or Dynamically Compiled Modules – DCM) now makes it possible to share and install Saito applications as small files, which run on your Saito Client in the browser regardless of any permissions given from any server or full node. This is a recent development, so the infrastructure and UX of this process, while functional, is being improved in real time.

While DCM is still used primarily by tinkerers, the technology has removed the most fundamental roadblocks in the development of a P2P App Store which maximizes user freedom and control. We envision this as a model where developers aren’t required to host expensive infrastructure and users are able to easily modify and install new applications.

Of course, the best part is that our vision is just our vision. Anyone who has a different idea of where to take this technology has nothing stopping them from doing so, though we do appreciate our role in laying the groundwork and setting good examples as we pioneer Web3 firsthand.

Realms NFT Card Game

As work on the consensus code accelerates, and our bound-UTXO token model nears completion, our Magic The Gathering-style NFT card game removes more roadblocks. That being said, while much of the artwork has been completed, the team is looking for those willing to take some initiative and manage the revival of its development, like assets and basic code, to meetup with the release of native NFTs and tokens on Saito.

Settlers of Saitoa and Other Games

Settlers game play and UI has been improved through multiple recent iterations. Smoother and more polite info boxes have put our old pop-up style modals to shame enough to be adopted across more titles in our suite of P2P Games. While small changes, we don’t take for granted that whether the underlying architecture is legacy Web2 or Saito’s Advanced P2P Game Engine, users expect a premium interface. Despite the nuances involved in making cryptographically secure, stable, and fast P2P games, Saito’s Development Kit makes these UI/UX improvements simple.

Some unreleased games are also nearing completion, so look forward to those! If you’d like to develop a game on Saito, get started with our tutorials.

Archive Nodes

Archive Nodes support decentralized data ownership and access of data in an environment of primarily P2P-connected clients. Much of the challenge of leaving the server-client centralized model behind is tackled by Archive Nodes.

Separate from Token Persistence, Data Persistence has been a large focus from the development side recently. Data Persistence just means that important data, be it authentication data or user generated content, is available to network participants from a variety of different sources and not a central bottleneck or checkpoint.

As mentioned earlier, Archive Node is a term being used to describe peers and nodes on the network who can hold and share such arbitrary data in a way that doesn’t allow them to fabricate or impersonate other users. This is an important service to offer to trusted peers and potentially fee-paying strangers alike – the system is designed to accommodate both ends of that spectrum and everything in between. As applications rely less and less on full nodes to operate, our Archive Node tooling proves its worth more and more.

The monetization opportunities for Archive Nodes have the potential to democratize the business of online storage; users can encrypt their data for a more secure experience than services like Google Drive. At the same time, the ability to host the content of other users and get paid for it will apply to any participant on the network, greatly expanding past the Web2 market for storage.

Saito Blog Module

A future flagship demonstration of Archive Nodes is our under-development Saito Blog Module, which will allow decentralized hosting for rich-text content. Saito hosts its livestreams on Swarmcast, our community discussions on Red Square and Chat – it only makes sense that we move these blog posts on-chain and firmly into Web3 alongside.

Anyone who wants to start a blog and doesn’t want to worry about infrastructure, censorship or the hurdles of the legacy internet will of course be invited to join us as this module rolls out.

Core Node Software & Consensus

More developer work over the last few weeks has gone into our Core Rust Node, and as the work to improve applications call upon more improvements to the Core Rust Node Software, the community can expect more updates and upgrades of this nature. We are ahead of the roadmap on the Token Persistence Curve and will consider accelerating the pace at which the network supports smaller and smaller token balances as development progresses.

First-Class Networking

Saito clients work by connecting to a full node, downloading the client software, and then running the client software to finally make P2P connections. As the Rust layer has received more development, one of the upgrades for Saito Clients has been moving the P2P connections out of the NodeJS code and into WASM Rust code.

Where previously establishing these P2P connections for users required some mediation from a helpful full node, the Swarm style connections made directly and without intermediation used between full nodes is now available to all users on Saito. This greatly increases the ability to interact with peers on the network and further decentralizes all user activities on Saito Web3.

Security at Low Fee-Volume

Saito is non-inflationary, so tokens are not printed to prop-up network security like in Bitcoin. We have therefore developed an anti-joyriding mechanism to prevent the most threatening attack vectors Saito might face before it garners enough fee-volume to secure itself automatically. This security feature is currently implemented and soon to be turned on.

Though work on this takes place behind the scenes, and most outward focus is on the applications, this network upgrade represents a significant step forward on the roadmap as it opens up the door for all manner of financial activity on Saito, including moving the Token Persistence Curve further down and securely supporting wealth transfers in native Saito tokens.

NFTs, Bound-UTXOs, Tokens

A Saito NFT is a special UTXO that is bound to another UTXO that has fees and can be transferred normally.

The bound-UTXO thus always moves with the standard transaction, providing a flexible and simple NFT standard for Saito Mainnet. This is a technique unique to Saito which results in some desirable advantages:

1. NFTs are lighter and cheaper to create and send.

2. “Split NFTs” are possible, defining a fungible token standard within the Bound-UTXO framework

The standard is under development and currently under testing. Progress can be tracked on Github. We thank the developers eagerly awaiting this feature for their patience, and share your excitement in seeing what the community builds.

ATR Hyperloop

Our position in the roadmap and the Token Persistence Curve are closely related, and we are slightly ahead of schedule on both. In the interest of carrying that momentum forward, the team is internally considering putting the network into an ATR Hyperloop where the epoch for Automatic Transaction Rebroadcasting (ATR) is significantly shortened.

By accelerating the rate of ATR, the number of ATR cycles will increase and give much more information to core developers how this novel system is faring in production. Any issues can identified and ameliorated, and the increased pace will speed this development process so that Saito can handle larger volumes of transaction data sooner.

This will have big implications for applications. As more data and tokens persist on the network, users have an easier time hosting their data on-chain and developers building applications that can live without help from a node or server. Token and Data Persistence are set to move Saito forward in the roadmap and place it even further ahead of any potential competition.

Conclusion

Saito is on pace with the roadmap laid out years ago, and even slightly ahead of schedule. We plan to carry this momentum forward, not coast, and get Saito even further along the roadmap at a faster pace than previously anticipated.

All of this on the back of a massively successful, and still ongoing, Saito Summer campaign which has opened opportunities for third-party developers and expanded our on-chain ecosystem. Work in the coming months will shift to core consensus client and node software to improve Saito’s Token and Data Persistence. This work will even further enhance the openness and freedom afforded to Saito applications.

If you have any questions, bring them to Red Square or, if you are old-school, Telegram. For anyone wondering what Saito has been up to and where it’s going, this is a great post to share with them!

The post Saito Summer 12 – The Big Picture appeared first on Saito.

Avoid Scams: Saito Migration is not mandatory – your wrapped tokens are safe to hold.

Today marks the completion of the second Saito ATR cycle, again rewarding holders of native-chain Saito. Balances will update soon, if not already, visible on the explorer.

The Token Persistence Update is currently at a minimum of 125,000 tokens for native-chain persistence, this curve continues to reflect our progress and priorities as more and more users organically start using the protocol. See more info on our tokenomics page.

Avoid scams! There is no need to migrate! Those considering migration should always verify the bridge address through official channels like our Wiki and Official Telegram: https://saito.io/migration/. You can always email info@saito.io with any questions.

We remain grateful to our community for their ongoing support as we continue to build and expand our revolutionary network.

The post Second ATR Cycle and Rewards appeared first on Saito.

ByBit WSOT

ByBit Dex Pro WSOT Competition is still ongoing, Saito is moving up the ranks. Do your part and put Saito in the spotlight.

LCX Contact

We’v been put into contact with The LCX Crypto Exchange, one founded on a similar merit-first set of principles as Saito itself. We’re always interested in working with institutions who will respect our commitment to our community (we routinely reject offers to dump tokens on our loyal community). Thanks to Maxime for opening this dialogue.

DCM on Mainnet

DCM (Dynamically Compiled Modules) makes it simple for anyone to distribute their Saito apps without infrastructure, and is now live on the production network.

Developing applications is also getting easier with our revamped Saito Wiki, which includes developer documentation, tutorials and more. If you’re interested in building there has never been a better time to get started – check out our Tutorial Series and get in touch with the team! We will help you develop and distribute your application. We love being involved with community efforts – don’t be shy!

If you think the Wiki is missing anything, let us know, or make a rough draft (and PR it on Github) and we’ll do the rest if it is helpful to the community.

The natural evolution of application development on Saito, and what is being worked on next is the foundations for a P2P App Store. Development features like module-signing, easy uninstall and more are stepping stones to this goal. Saito apps already feature rich composability features which makes weaving new features into existing modules easier than most are ready for!

Here You Go: Here I Stand

For those so inclined, the beloved cult-classic strategy game, Here I Stand, is now in Alpha, soon to be on the Saito Arcade.

Titles like Twilight Struggle have been a notable growth area for Saito, and we believe anyone fading these titles is missing out. Saito’s implementation of TS is widely regarded as the best implementation – it’s fun, easy to use, and leading in user control, privacy and all around sustainability. The fact that no central service is required has attracted gamers who otherewise couldn’t access these titles.

Here I Stand on Saito is a labor of love along the same vein – and like TS, has some dedicated players willing to usher you into the addiction. If board games aren’t your forte, you’ll be happy to note that numerous advancements in the game engine were developed in parallel alongside this new title, which have implications for Realms (our under-development Magic The Gathering like game) as well as non-gaming applications down the line. Get in touch to play and help test, or wait for official release.

To hear David and Richard nerd out about the game engine and its advanced cryptographic techniques (with applications well beyond gaming), give the livestream a like and a listen.

Video Call Architecture Improvement

Video Calls now exist with permanent key IDs not tied to any single user. Without sacrificing security or decentralization, this change allows a room to exist without any single peer hosting it, alleviating some coordination issues while never succumbing to reliance on a central server. Now anyone can be the first to join and scheduling calls in advance is a stable and reliable experience. These changes also mean the protocol has been greatly simplified and is more composable with other applications.

No central servers compromising your control or privacy is something we regard as a basic standard of service on Saito yet which is sorely lacking on the internet generally. On-chain video call coordination and off-chain connections isn’t a new Saito innovation, but continues to put the capabilities of other blockchains to shame. Use Saito Video Call without a login, ads, or loss of privacy and never go back.

More News Next Week

The front page of our website is being updated – thanks to the community members with design skills willing to point us in a more aesthetic direction. The community is always welcome to show us how we can improve.

Stay tuned for a roadmap update, information on third party nodes, and more general progress towards Saito World Domination! There may be some hints lying around… Be sure to watch the recording of the last update to get all the details.

The post Saito Summer 11 appeared first on Saito.

Ship Web 3 Applications with Absolute Ease

No longer do you need to run a full node to share your Saito applications or modifications. Distribute software atop Saito Network by sending the data in a P2P transaction, fileshare or otherwise – installation is now drag-and-drop.

Modules can now be dynamically compiled, sent and installed between individual users. Application publishers gain freedom in distribution and are no longer required to run a node. Modders and hackers can edit the source code of popular applications, like Red Square, to behave in whatever way they please.

Developers have always been free to host their own applications on their own nodes, but now it’s even easier. Compared to publishing an application to a traditional, Web 2 app store, using Dynamic Module Compilation is a walk in the park – however you want to distribute your code is valid and in the hands of users. No gatekeepers – users install the apps they want, publishers just send the compiled code.

Revamped Tutorials

And to help developers start shipping the next generation of internet applications, we’ve revised and are actively improving our developer documentation to help you develop applications built applications on the Saito Blockchain.

If these tutorials aren’t enough, we’re always around to help, visit the Telegram, or preferably Red Square to get support; we’ll also edit the docs based on developer feedback and be adding more advanced lessons. Now is a great time to plant some seeds in the Saito garden.

We still encourage developers to run a local node to develop and test their applications. We’ll have tutorials ready soon detailing how to compile, send and install them to any interested Saito user on Mainnet. The process will be quite simple.

Bybit Dex Pro

The Saito Ethereum wrapped-token can now be traded on Bybit Dex, offering another option for traders who want to get their hands on the token

This coincides with our participation in the WSOT Dex Wave, a competition between multiple tokens striving for exposure and prizes. The competition starts today! Learn how you can show your support here and stay tuned to the official X account as we share campaigns.

The post Saito Summer 10 – Dynamic Modules appeared first on Saito.

Full update and Q&A here.

Web3 Profile Customization

We’ve introduced profile customization in Red Square! You don’t need to understand the technical details to start using it and better expressing yourself – just go to Red Square and navigate to your profile!

Passing the larger files around required for this is simple for a Web 2 service, but required a bit of nuance and innovation if we wanted to remain true P2P, Web 3. On Red Square, all data is sent P2P, and there is no central server to rely on. Storing the images associated with every user locally is not feasible, but neither is waiting for a user to come online to view their content or profiles.

To solve this, we’ve generalized how the Archive Module functions – a mechanism on the network which allows peers to store and validate their data when they aren’t connected to the network. Data is cryptographically signed, so it can’t be faked, and nodes gathering routing work will have the incentive to support this service.

Apart from profile customization, we’ve also leveraged the Archive Module to streamline and enhance how group chats work, allowing more customization and better synchronization.

Fileshare Improvements

Thank you to everyone who provided user feedback and debugging support since we officially released P2P Fileshare a few weeks ago.

Improvements come in the form of UI/UX as well as technical. For starters, you can now send a link to recipients to initiate a transfer – no longer does the person you are sending to need to have an existing Saito Wallet or be a contact, just send the link and that will be handled for them automatically.

The other improvement comes with sending large files. Since data is often cached on the route between two peers, the true state of the transfer could sometimes become desynced. We’ve updated Fileshare to handle this, so sending large files should work more consistently than before.

When NFTs?

NFTs aren’t here yet, but profile customization was an important prerequisite for the user-facing side of them. With this out of the way, we’re moving forward on the technical side of implementing NFTs and tokens generally on Saito Chain. We’ll be sharing a technical document outlining our approach to this soon, so stay tuned!

And More…

Be sure to listen to the full update to hear about everything going on behind the scenes at Saito.

The post Saito Summer 9 appeared first on Saito.

“It is difficult to hold the world’s interest for more than half an hour at a time…” – Salvador Dali

The 7th highlighted update we’re talking about for Saito Summer is asynchronicity in the game engine and new and improved in game clocks; each satisfy an opposite need.

Asynchronous Gaming

Asynchronous Gaming is a general term to describe the ability to support secure P2P game play even if some peers are offline. For the user, the benefits are simple: you no longer need to remain online for the duration of a game, and you can now play multiple P2P games at once.

This is a feature users expect, regardless of the architecture underneath, but it represented unique challenges given Saito’s advanced game engine. Nevertheless, today’s version of the game engine now accommodates a far more general set of experiences, makes less assumptions, and removes unnecessary restriction.

Async invites (for supported games) allow your opponents to begin making moves before you even come online. Players are no longer required to keep a game open to play it, letting them use other apps like Red Square, play other games, or whatever they like between moves. We invite you to play async and share any feedback.

Decentralized Clocks

Again, if Saito were a Web 2 system, it would be easy to take for granted the nuance involved in a coherent, P2P clock system. Still, this is yet another feature gamers, especially competitive gamers, expect.

Clocks have existed in Saito Games for a long time, but this update shores them up with a new system capable of keeping each players’ clocks in sync with the others and UI improvements to display this information. The new system also patches certain exploits which allowed players misrepresent their remaining time.

Without the support of a central server, you can now play tightly-timed turn-based games similarly to in-person competition or premium sites like Chess.com. This brings the feature-set of a purely public and P2P Arcade (the only blockchain project working on this tech) up to the standard of private, centralized, closed-source services. Saito is Web 3 without compromises.

“I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.” – Magnus Carlsen

With this update very long games, taking place over the course of days or weeks, or very tightly-timed competitive experiences gain support from within the Saito Game Engine. Developers and users alike should find much utility out of these improvements.

The post Asynchronous Gaming appeared first on Saito.

Your Files, Your Bandwidth

No limits, no login, no extra costs, end-to-end encrypted. Saito Fileshare is available for anyone to send and receive arbitrarily large files, completely P2P.

Users of SMS, Discord, Telegram and other messaging apps have undoubtedly felt the frustration of transfer limits. Not to mention the privacy concerns of sending personal or sensitive data across untrusted, privately controlled networks.

With Saito, you no longer have to deal with this. Saito Fileshare is entirely between you and the receiver. Your files and how you share them is your business on your bandwidth.

Learn how to use it here.

How Does P2P File Share Work?

Fileshare is secured atop the Saito Key Exchange Protocol. The shared secret they create serves many functions, including:

1. Users can efficiently send each other data which no node, ISP or other potential attacker can decipher.

2. Users can securely setup a high-throughput, firewall-penetrating connection to each other – just like Saito Talk.

Files are streamed across this direct connection at the whim and total control of the users. When finished, the files can be saved to the device just like any normal file download.

Get Involved

Saito Fileshare is a flexible and open source module and utility. Want to start a P2P cloud, movie rental, video hosting or other Web3 service? Hack up the module code and feel free to reach out to the team for any assistance. We are excited to see its full potential.

Conclusion

Ditch the paid subscriptions, registration requirements, and privacy pitfalls. Use your public key and your bandwidth and take computing back into your control.

The post Saito Fileshare – Unlimited, P2P, Encrypted appeared first on Saito.

Saito’s P2P platform introduces Gamecast, a feature that combines secure cryptographic gaming with decentralized livestreaming. This feature integrates Saito’s long established Arcade with the recently launched Swarmcasting service.

Saito users are now able to both play and livestream any game on the Saito Arcade – opening the door for all manner of content creation around the arcade. Not only is this an opportunity for Saito regulars to build an audience while using the platform, but an avenue to onboard new users and teach games like Twilight Struggle or the soon to release Here I Stand.

It’s Easy

Gamecasting could hardly be easier. Unlike Twitch or YouTube, where OBS, and an account each have to be meticulously configured, setup and registered. Saito Apps requires no registration, and starting a Gamecast takes just a few clicks.

1 .Start playing any game on The Arcade

2. Game Menu -> Share -> Cast game

Casting recently added YouTube support, so you can amplify your P2P Cast to YouTube and also save that livestream as a video. To see how to simulcast on YouTube and other information about Swarmcasting, consult the wiki page.

The post Gamecast appeared first on Saito.

This is why we use the term General Grievous Attack at Saito to describe the hardest variant of the 51% attack to solve — the version where the bad guys just ignore the good guys, refusing to relay their messages or even include any transactions forwarded by them that might trigger routing payouts to other nodes.

This makes the attack impossible to punish in proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms under majoritarian conditions. Our attackers are not producing fewer blocks after the attack than before. They are not processing fewer fees. And they are still producing blocks faster than their honest counterparts while controlling all the “votes” that determine who gets paid — so how can it be less profitable for them to produce blocks?

In this blog post, we’ll show how “routing work” solves the General Grievous Attack. And in the spirit of generosity, we’ll do it while giving our attackers a formidable 75% of all first-hop routing work, 100% of network hashpower and 100% of the ATR payout. Other consensus mechanisms have long since collapsed. But routing work continues to function.

To see how, assume our blockchain processes 100 USD in fees per block. Our pre-attack payouts are as follows:

The mining payout consumes its reward in energy costs, making the attacker’s pre-attack income 62.5 USD:

Right away, we can see why cooperating with honest nodes is beneficial to the attacker. Were our attacker to produce a chain with only the transaction fees they are collecting, they would lose 25% of their 75 USD in mining costs and earn only 56.25 USD. But their results are even worse under the General Grievous Attack. Consider the changes:

Post-attack income is consequently:

Attackers have gone from earning 62.5 USD per block to somewhere between 31.25 USD and 56.25 USD. Not only is attacking irrational, but it is even provably costly in any network where infrastructure providers pay competitive rates for inbound fee-flow. And any rational users can increase this cost-of-attack further simply by withholding their transaction flow, or sending it to another node.

Advanced Commentary on Asymmetricality

Our attacker blockchain will eventually settle into a lower-fee equilibrium. Once enough golden tickets go unsolved (burning the routing payout for good) mining difficulty will drop. And as censored transactions join the ATR loop, their fees will help buffer some of the collapse in fee-throughput. But losses are suffered during the transition, and bourn by the attacker who proposes the blocks during this period.

Cost-of-Attack can be increased further by having consensus observe and punish any drop in new fee throughput, expansion in the set of UTXO subject to rebroadcasting, or any sharp increase in aggregate routing work by simply burning a portion of the fees collected during this period before payouts are calculated. This conditional-burning is a second type of asymmetrical tax, as it does not affect honest block producers cooperating in equilibrium.

The symmetrical attacks of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake vanish. We transcend them by shifting away from “voting systems” where any majority can impose costs on any minority and towards an efficiency tax powered by a fee-unlock “flywheel” that punishes nodes who push the network into a less efficient state. All nodes will rationally spin up the flywheel if they have access to third-party fees. More fees means more blocks for them and greater profits. And all honest nodes will accept these blocks as any efficiency gain elsewhere in the network increases their own profitability.

But attackers? Because attackers are deliberately orphaning efficiently-produced work, they must either spend and burn their own money to maintain the network in a state of artificial efficiency (burning their own money to avoid greater losses) or accept the cost of slowing the flywheel by letting it consign a quantifiable amount of the fees they are contributing to oblivion.

In this way, routing work achieves a quantifiable and asymmetrical cost-of-attack that punishes attackers without introducing symmetrical attack vectors on honest minority nodes. Problems unsolvable in the old system melt away in the new paradigm. When General Grievous threaten to abandon ship, the best strategic move is simply to let them go.

The post The General Grievous Attack appeared first on Saito.