The Horizen Network have announced that they will be launching the Sidechain Alpha, which is a unique tool allowing developers and enterprises to quickly and efficiently create their own blockchains. As part of these news, there will be a re-introduction of the project with a new version of the Horizen Whitepaper, dubbed version 2.0.
Sidechain Alpha Details and Whitepaper 2.0 Features
Sidechain Alpha – A Great Milestone
Horizen Sidechain Alpha is the first big step towards achieving the plans of the developers of creating an application rich environment. They want to bring blockchain benefits back, including privacy and decentralization. Let’s go over what Sidechain Alpha is in a short overview. These new sidechains can be created with the use of a programming language and consensus mechanism that will suit your application. This will also retain its ability to communicate information and values back to the mainchain network of Horizen, where over 30,000 nodes are operational.
The application logic is segregated from the main blockchain in order for scalability and security to be maintained. The independency of applications is crucial, as well as their rapid deployment without the consent of other stakeholders in the ecosystem. The new platform will allow developers to create dApps, which will be implemented as parallel blockchains (sidechains) to the mainchain keeping their own data and logic intact. This will be achieved with the help of a single protocol, which the applications will use to receive and send back coins between the mainchain and sidechains. It is named Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) and we will review it next.
The Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol
One of the biggest advantages of the CCTP is that sidechains must use it, otherwise they are not operational and the mainchain does not have to monitor all sidechains. The sidechains on the other hand, will have to always track the mainchain. The two main operations that the protocol allows is transferring coins from the mainchain to sidechains, called forward transfers, and transferring coins from sidechains to mainchain, called backwards transfers. In reality, these are not real transfers, it is just “burning” the coins in the chain that sends the coins and creating them in the chain that receives the transaction.
The Decoupled Consensus Between Chains
After looking at what the CCTP is and its function, it is time to talk about the sidechain consensus and the rules it applies. The system is consensus agnostic and the adoption of any kind of consensus protocol is allowed. While the mainchain is using the well-known Proof of Work consensus, the sidechains have their own consensus methods. Thus, sidechains have their own unique transactions, epochs, withdrawal requests, certificates sent to the mainchain and rules. Since the sidechains use completely different consensus rules from each other and the mainchain, the model is called “Decoupled Consensus Between Chains”.
Sidechain Development Platform And The Horizen Node Network
Except for developing the CCTP and injecting it in the mainchain, the other main goal of the team is to create a platform that is powerful and easy to use for the developers to build their own truly decentralized blockchain apps. The platform can be referred to as the Sidechain SDK, although it is not exactly a software development kit. It is much more than that, as consensus, transactions, network layers, wallet, UI and more aspects had to be developed, in order to ease the load on developers. This platform makes those steps faster and easier, allowing focus on the dApp creation itself.
The node operators in the Horizen network will have the freedom to support individual sidechains based on built-in incentives. There are three tiers of nodes in total, which are regular full nodes, Secure Nodes and Super Nodes. The latter two are incentivized with a share of the block subsidy of each mined block. The whole idea behind this is to set some minimum requirements to the Horizen node network, as to ensure its sufficient capability to run a robust ecosystem of sidechains with the help of these nodes.