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The Divi Project is currently undertaking a significant expansion of its vision and utility. This exciting journey involves exploring five avenues of progress that will revolutionize the way we interact with digital assets. Our core is undergoing a major transformation that will significantly enhance its utility while ensuring top-notch security against future threats. The Divi Project promises a new era of possibilities that will help shape the digital asset industry.
To wit, the Divi Foundation is journeying on a new vision for the Divi blockchain:
At Divi, our unwavering mission is to leverage the exceptional features of the Divi blockchain, such as specialized smart contracts, staking vaults, and trustless side chains, to create a dynamic and secure platform that offers a wide array of services for both individuals and enterprises in the cryptocurrency realm. This lite paper will discuss the current and future technologies that inhabit the Divi blockchain, and then discuss how this vision is achieved.
The Divi Project core has been completely refactored to remove as much technical debt as possible from its previous forks (BTC, DASH, PIVX, ), thus it no longer resembles its predecessors as masternodes have been removed, dedicated specialized smart contract abilities have been deployed and new essential features like staking vaults have been implemented. This puts the Divi blockchain in a very unique position, the code has been scrubbed clean and the foundations for utility are being put in place. It also has been made to be extremely modular code, so that the features described within, as well as future upgrades, can be implemented and enhanced with as much ease as possible.
Its significant features are described below.
The Divi blockchain is a proof of stake (PoS) protocol, using a UTXO ledger, based on the Bitcoin PoW consensus model. The chain has been radically enhanced to have features that are non-existent in other chains, PoS or not. However, the fundamental proof of stake tokenomics has not changed since September 27, 2018, when the blockchain was started, except for the removal of masternodes which pointed more rewards at stakers, leaving the inflation rate unchanged.
Block time:
Divi’s core engine targets 1 block/minute. The algorithm reevaluates the difficulty at every block. After several improvements, the average block time when writing this document is around 59.2 seconds.
The release of Divi 3.0 happened at the end of year 4 for the blockchain, the emission of new Divi will represent 19.7% inflation to start. Block rewards are distributed as follows:
Every 10080 blocks (the superblock period) a special ‘superblock’ is minted. In this block, the Divi rewards accumulated over those blocks are sent to a special address for development, promotion, and charities.
This superblock combines payments for charity and the treasury in the same block, but they are assigned to different Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs). When it is time for the treasury payment, we calculate the payment amount for the entire cycle and send it to the designated treasury address.
Unique to Divi, every 10080 blocks, the cumulative lottery holdings get distributed to 11 validation addresses. As long as a validator is staking at least 10,000 Divi and has received at least one reward within the superblock period, they are eligible to participate in the lottery.
The total amount of Divi distributed to lottery winners is 504,000 Divi and it is delivered as one reward of 252,000 and ten rewards of 25,200 Divi. A validation address can not win more than one lottery per 4 superblock periods.
The winners are chosen in a “king of the hill” method by which the hashes of the blocks that are validated are enumerated. When a new validator’s hash enumerates higher than any of the 11 in the ordered list, they are placed appropriately in that list and the address of the validator with the lowest hash is removed.
At the end of the superblock, lottery rewards are distributed to the validator members of the list.
References:
Lottery
Foundation and blockchain evolution
Rewards Distribution
Understanding Earning
Divi's specialized smart contracts introduce a unique approach to secured financial agreements, allowing users to create and fund special accounts with specific spending conditions. This innovation appeals to cryptocurrency holders, developers, and merchants, offering practical applications such as staking services, subscriptions, refundable debit cards, gift cards, vouchers, and a foundation for a secure refundable purchases system. Leveraging the trustless blockchain, these immutable financial agreements enable merchants to provide new payment options that their customers have never had available to them before.
Divi's Staking Vaults offer a revolutionary solution to the challenges faced by hardware wallets in cryptocurrency storage and staking. Designed to provide secure cold storage if desired, these Validator Vaults allow users to store and stake their funds separately from the validating server. Unlike traditional hardware wallets, Divi's innovative Vaults enable users to actively participate in staking through the hybrid PoW/PoS process, allowing their coins to generate rewards.
The key feature of a Divi validator staking vault is that the staked funds are held in the owners' wallet, but are designated to a managing wallet which does that actual work of staking. This means that staking can be done with the fund owners wallet offline, providing the best security available to the owners of Divi.
With Divi's Staking Vaults, users have the flexibility to choose between trusted companies or manage their own Vaults, giving them full control over their staking activities. Safely store your funds, earn DIVI, and embrace the future of staking with confidence using Divi's user-friendly and secure Staking Vaults. Participate in securing and maximizing the potential of blockchain networks with Divi's simple and efficient staking solution.
Specialized Smart Contract functionality has existed on the Divi blockchain for a while but has been hard to make easy. By building on this feature we can enable on-chain escrow services, escrow between two parties without an intermediary. These funds will be released to the intended recipient upon a set of conditions being met, such as an amount of time, signatures by certain keys or subsets of keys, restricting fund recipients directly, or combinations thereof. It is important to note that these are all FINANCIAL PRIMITIVES (i.e. building blocks) so they can be combined in logical hierarchies that multiply the possibilities exponentially (e.g. on-chain enforced tiered-corporate spending limits)!
Similar in nature to the Divi on-chain escrow service, Divi subscriptions offer a way to provide a sequential payment to a service from one party to another. For a subscription, a set of funds is allocated to a special address, and the user and the service supplier decide upon a set of requirements that need to be met for a part of the funds to be released. Both the user and the service provider can cancel the contract at any time, but the funds that have left the special address are non-refundable unless the service provider wants to return funds (which they would do simply through a normal sending of funds). This is the traditional relationship between a service provider and a customer before credit cards and banks act as intermediaries.
Both the escrow and subscription features lie at the blockchain level. This means that they are quite difficult to implement as proper implementation requires both on-chain and off-chain work. Divi Foundation will be supplying open-source tools, such as Python scripts and other examples, to allow users and developers to participate in using these blockchain features for themselves. Now, with Divi, service providers can set up crypto-based subscriptions in a trustless manner that does not require a bank or financial service like Paypal, or Venmo.
References:
Specialized Smart Contracts
Staking Vaults
Staking vaults review
Staking Vaults deep dive
Divi Escrow (coming soon)
Divi Subscriptions (coming soon)
Divi Escrow Service (coming soon)
Divi's approach to side chains offers a compelling solution to the challenges faced by traditional layer 1 blockchain. The Divi Core, the underlying layer 1 blockchain, prioritizes maximum security through immutability. To maintain this security while enabling additional features, Divi utilizes purpose-built side chains that rely on the main chain for support. These side chains can provide a multitude of benefits, including faster transaction processing, allowing private NFT hosting, and offering a compatible environment for deploying EVM smart contracts within the Divi ecosystem.
The introduction of side chains also unlocks the potential for more privacy-oriented systems, enabling businesses to leverage the advantages of blockchain technology without compromising transaction transparency. With Divi's side chains, the ecosystem can scale indefinitely to meet the needs of expansion while preserving security and efficiency. All this can be done without creating new tokens or relying on wrapped versions of Divi on other blockchains. It’s truly a Divi Everywhere approach that will exponentially enhance the blockchain ecosystem.
Furthermore, Divi provides a comprehensive set of tools for developers to build their own side chains and smart contracts with minimal effort, making it accessible for innovation to flourish. Divi's commitment to user sovereignty is evident in its user-friendly wallets and patented non-custodial deployment systems. With the addition of Divi's side chains and smart contracts, the entire industry is set to be revolutionized, providing new possibilities and solutions that make cryptocurrency easier and its users more secure.
Divi's side chain technology also introduces a unique approach to permissionless innovation. Unlike other deployed side chains, Divi's side chains are designed to be decentralized and secure, eliminating the risks associated with centralized oracles and multisig tethers. This decentralized approach ensures that new projects within Divi's side chain ecosystem are inherently safer, offering enhanced security.
After implementing side chains, Divi will introduce a collection of standardized Side Chain templates, which can be readily utilized by new projects to expedite their launch. These templates will harness the robust security of the Divi base chain while incorporating their distinct consensus mechanisms. Several potential examples include:
Implementing a fork of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) into a Divi Side chain offers several notable advantages. The benefits are as follows:
Introduction of a New Chain with new incentives: The integration of an EVM side chain introduces a fresh blockchain network accompanied by incentivized rewards, attracting participants to engage and contribute to its security and growth.
Direct Linkage to the Main Chain: The EVM side chain is directly linked to Divi's main chain, providing strong incentives for Divi owners to actively utilize and participate in the side chain ecosystem, thereby fostering increased adoption and utility.
Developer-Friendly Approach: Unlike other solutions, securing an EVM side chain on Divi does not require developers to possess specialized knowledge or expertise. They can leverage their existing familiarity with Ethereum's programming environment, enabling seamless transition and ease of development.
Agile Side Chain Development: By employing an EVM side chain, Divi gains the flexibility to introduce side chain properties and functionalities without the limitations or time delays associated with the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) process. This grants Divi the ability to swiftly implement enhancements and tailor the side chain experience to meet specific requirements.
Seamless Integration of Ethereum Contracts: Leveraging the EVM compatibility, Ethereum contracts can be effortlessly replicated and deployed within Divi's ecosystem. This streamlines the process of transitioning existing Ethereum-based projects and contracts, facilitating their integration into Divi's thriving ecosystem.
Lower Fees and Reduced Bloat: Transacting on the EVM side chain offers the advantage of lower fees and mitigated network congestion, resulting in a more cost-effective and efficient experience for users. Additionally, the reduced data load on the main chain reduces blockchain bloat, ensuring smoother operation and enhanced scalability. These advantages should also lead to lower requirements for validator hardware.
The flexibility of this system allows for the seamless movement of assets between the EVM side chain and Divi's main chain, providing users with the convenience to transfer their assets as needed.
In a sidechain, rules are open for design and improvement allowing for innovations in the design of liquidity pools. Consider the following: a blockchain-scale version of Uniswap where users can deposit their funds for trading and use their blockchain to secure them. A potential solution is a blinded order book. In this system, arbitrage transactions are blinded before being added to the order book. When executed, the transactions search for liquidity pools with the lowest marginal cost and optimize trades based on best value using deterministic max-flow algorithms. This approach combines liquidity from various assets into a master pool and prevents psychological manipulation of buy/sell walls.
NFTs face challenges due to their visibility on the blockchain. To tackle this, we have implemented an on-chain encryption solution. However, this approach introduces another problem: the publicly available asset requires more block space, increasing storage demands. To negate this effect, the Divi Blockchain utilizes an "ephemeral" sidechain, where blocks that have surpassed a certain age are condensed into a hash for storage. Accessing the information within these blocks is facilitated through Merkle proofs, ensuring lightweight blockchain maintenance while enabling proof of ownership and the transfer of such assets.
Bridges are essentially a custodial arrangement for porting an asset to another ecosystem. With a side chain that’s secured by both sides (as per the above blockchain dex) a token representing the asset on the one chain can be traded against the unwrapped token on the other side, in particular, the side chain itself could serve as the tokenization layer. There exists a nearly limitless potential for side chain innovation, from crowdfunding and governance to Inventory management and the provision of financial products. Other possible side chain templates include;
Charity as a side chain: Community-funded initiatives powered by DIVI, e.g. raffles for charity to feed children in need. The decentralized nature of the side chain would help to prove auditability of the raffle and make it honest and verifiable.
Bounty-program-as-a-service: Launch a blockchain-style environment for testing the security of a smart contract or other implementation in a way that guarantees funds to the attacker.
Financial product side chains: Collateralized Certificates of Deposit for borrowers to take out loans from lenders, Volatility adjusted futures contracts as loan insurance, DEx-Driven Market Price Oracles, Multi-Asset Off-chain Liquidity Pools.
Side chain governance: Key ingredients: Digital ID Issuance by Centralized Party (Divi), with Zero-Knowledge proof of unique vote.
Below is an example that could implement various aspects of the Divi ecosystem for a truly decentralized operation. In no way are these functions limited to this example.
Perhaps a company would like to supply its users with NFT-based certifications for daily cobalt mining production. This may be desired due to the unstable regions in which mining happens that are prone to corruption. Thus a miner would bring cobalt to a measurement device which would immediately commit the cobalt content and weight to an immutable ledger. A contract reads the ledger, adds up daily production from all miners in a region, and reports the daily value to customers who are interested in this data, such as stockholders, battery makers, etc.
In this scenario, a side chain has NFT capabilities and smart contract abilities to tally production based on the NFTs and send funds to workers as required. When a worker submits his or her ore, an NFT is written by the machine certifying the ore submission. Funds are sent into the side chain either by mining employers or cobalt buyers directly. Those funds go to workers directly upon submission of ore via a smart contract built into the same side chain. Workers can then move their funds out of the side chain through the trustless peg-out and exchange their payment as they see fit. These funds are truly safe between funder and worker thanks to the trustless peg-out system. Meanwhile, interested parties can view data about the process, and totals if they subscribe to the data service. The subscription itself is a Divi Specialized Smart Contract, in which the data service is enabled to anyone who subscribes. The entire process is highly resistant to corruption and data obfuscation or loss.
As always, Divi will keep expanding its offering through its partners. Like the Divi Mobile Wallet, developed by Divi labs, the desktop wallet built by Qbito technologies, DiviDefi and other web3 integrations by Dekryption Labs, Divigo with their whatsapp wallet, Lightning works and its unique approach to Digital Comics, the side chains will follow the same concept and be developed in collaboration with a new unannounced partner. So, stay tuned!
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