MASS Net, a decentralized public ledger with no requirement of authorization, adopts a PoC (Proof of capacity) consensus mechanism and has the biggest feature of HDD mining. Its algorithm is named MASS consensus algorithm, which was proposed in a paper by a top scientist of MIT in 2017, and has solved the problems of ASIC-resistance, long-range attacks, etc. faced by the PoC mechanism.
Now let’s have a discussion on the value of MASS Net through 3 questions.
What is special about PoC?
Consensus algorithms are the foundation of all blockchains, which have constituted the most important part of blockchain platforms. Without consensus algorithm, blockchains will be unable to rewrite. The role of consensus layer is to drive miners to verify the data in new blocks so as to work out a consistent result. The driving force comes from the rewards and penalty, which ensures that miners invest some resources into the blockchain network, and the more resources they invest, the greater the probability of getting rewards. If the miner does evil, the resources he invested will suffer a loss. Therefore, the significance of consensus layer is to make blockchain a trusted machine and to be the foundation of the smart contract layer and the application layer.
The success of Bitcoin has stimulated the innovation of consensus. Up to now, as many as 30 consensus algorithms have emerged, among which the representative ones includes PoS (Proof of Stake), PoC (Proof of Capacity) and PoA (Proof of Authority). They have made corresponding improvements to the shortcomings of PoW consensus algorithm such as high energy consumption, low performance and insufficient decentralization.
The mechanism of PoC and PoW are similar, except that the computing power is transformed into storage power. Therefore we can make a comparison between PoC and PoW from the perspectives of energy consumption, performance and decentralization.
Energy Consumption
In the Bitcoin system, as the price of Bitcoin rises, miners will increase their computing power to get rewards, and the electricity consumption will increase accordingly. Besides, the rule of “difficulty adjustment” makes it harder to guess the hash value, causing the electricity consumption of the total network to increase ultimately.
PoC adopts hard disk mining, and the rise of price will also cause the storage space of total network to increase. However, PoC requires extremely low computing power, so it has a low energy consumption and be more environmentally friendly. The hard disks can be used for other purpose when no longer participating in PoC consensus, therefore, the overall performances of PoC is low resources consumption, while the electricity consumed in Bitcoin can hardly be reused.
Performance
In the PoC consensus process, it only needs to retrieve the best data from the hard disks and the retrieval speed is very fast. Taking MASS as an example, according to the operating data on the main net, there is a new block produced every 45 seconds, and the throughput has reached 200 TPS.
Besides, the PoC consensus has a natural feature of multi-chains, which means the same hard disk space is capable to provide consensus for multiple chains that meet the same PoC consensus standard. This feature can improve the overall throughput, and is the foundation for constructing a PoC multi-chain ecosystem.
Decentralization
Due to the obvious advantages of Bitcoin-based projects, other projects based on PoW algorithms generally face the difficulty of cold start in its early stages. However, in the field of PoC, there is no project currently in such a highly leading position, and the hard disk resources are quite scattered. The decentralization of resources makes it easier to found communities for PoC projects.
In addition to the advantages above, PoC consensus has the same security as PoW, both of which seek security from tangible resources outside the system. On the website 99bitcoins, Bitcoin has been declared “dead” hundreds of times, but it has no effect on its steady operation. The halving, plummeting and centralization of mining have not affected its security. The long-term rising price trend also reflects the value of security in Bitcoin. The PoC consensus mechanism replaces computing resources in PoW with space resources, and it is the similarity that makes PoC-based blockchains have the same security as Bitcoin.
Compared with other PoC projects, what are the advantages of MASS Net?
Projects in PoC field are divided into two categories, one is blockchains storing useful data represented by Filecoin, and the other is blockchains storing hash values represented by MASS. Though they both execute consensus algorithms basing on storage space, their goals are different. Filecoin faces the decentralized cloud storage market, and aims to become the infrastructure for decentralized application data storage and transmission. While the core goal of blockchains storing hash values is to provide consensus in a better way and created an encrypted economy.
Filecoin has a lofty ambition, causing it to face difficulties in development and implementation. Although the Filecoin mainnet has been delayed again and again, it does not affect the emergence of a large number of businesses providing IPFS mining machine pre-sales and mining pool services. Filecoin team has launched a project named Filecoin Discover, where miners can purchase hard disks with useful data stored for mining. The reason of launching this project is the high cost of data transmission, and hard disks are currently the best way to cut down the cost. It can be seen that it is hard to achieve decentralized storage of useful data, and the IPFS mining vendors are faced with the same problem, which means that Filecoin has a long way to go to create a healthy storage ecosystem.
Among several PoC blockchains that store Hash values (such as Burst, BHD, SpaceMesh, Chia), MASS has greater advantages in terms of implementation, fairness and ecological foundation.
MASS mainnet has been launched and the code has been open source. The core community development has provided full-node wallet and full-node miner software, and the community organization MASSCafe has provided products such as blockchain explorer and mining pool. While SpaceMesh and Chia, having attracted attention from capital, are still in the stage of testnet.
In MASS there is no foundation, no financing and no pre-mining, which is fair all participants. Established PoC projects such as BHD and Burst both have foundations or project parties behind them, and projects that have not launched the mainnet yet such as SpaceMesh and Chia both have financing and pre-mining.
The total amount of mining machines sold due to BHD or IPFS in 2019 is calculated in billions, and the available storage space may have reached 5000 P or even higher in the market, which has not included the idle cloud space of major institutions. These hard disks can participate in the consensus with very low cost of electricity, and a large number of existing hardware facilities have provided a strong guarantee for MASS ecosystem construction. Besides, MASS ecological and economic incentive mechanism encourages people to hold cryptocurrencies, which will help with cold start and ecological development.
As a member of public chains, what is the key point of MASS Net’s foothood?
The competition among public chains is fierce, for there are technical and ecological competition as well as ideological competition. Bitcoin has been questioned about lacking technological progress and 7 TPS is too slow. After Ethereum more than 40 smart contract platforms have emerged, but the ecological status of Ethereum is still unchallengable. And EOS, having achieved TPS to a million-level, is often criticized for violating the purpose of blockchain decentralization.
As for MASS, it has a grand vision, and it is down to earth. It is well known that the recognition of consensus value, a stable miner ecology and a stable cryptocurrency price interact and promote each other to build a healthy crypto economic ecology. The short-term goal of MASS is to build such a vibrant ecology. On this basis, with the expansion of the ecology, MASS consensus will be more secure, thereby promoting the widespread application of the protocol in the field of public chains.
In the long term, MASS intends to become the underlying infrastructure for blockchain consensus. PoC naturally has multi-chain characteristics, and miners can choose to provide consensus for multiple blockchains based on the MASS consensus engine. In 2017, thousands of blockchain application projects were born on the Ethereum platform and all of them are faced with governance problems with no exception. The ERC 20 Token is generated at one time when the smart contract is deployed, and distribution method, release method and release speed of the Token during the project operation process has a strong dependence on human governance. Meanwhile, the issuance mechanism of cryptocurrencies generated by mining is fixed by the code, which reduces human intervention. If the MASS consensus engine is able to be combined with smart contracts, there will be a huge space for imagination.
