Time is Your Money: Analog and Proof of Time

2022-05-10, 07:40

1. The PoT mechanism does not need to consume computing power to mine, nor does it have to stake tokens. The only thing you need to participate in the PoT mechanism is your time.

2. The goal of Analog is to build a Layer 0 blockchain and provide a decentralized time graph with massive amounts of timestamp data, so as to support the time data for the full chain future of the Web3 world.

3. The network nodes under the Analog area ecosystem are divided into four categories: Publishers, Time Nodes, Time Elements and Tesseract Nodes.

4. $ANLOG can be used to pay network fees on the chain, obtain additional income through staking, and participate in project governance. In addition, $ANLOG also acts as an incentive for nodes to submit, package and verify time data, and to maintain the normal operation of the network.

5. Analog based on PoT consensus mechanism has broad application prospects in education, finance, health, supply chain and other fields.
Once such a brainwashing game advertisement: "your time is very valuable. I use money to buy your time." This sentence sounds a little ridiculous, because we know that there is no free lunch in the world. In the web 3 world, we may be able to look at time in a decentralized way, a resource that everyone has, that is, the new blockchain consensus mechanism we will introduce today - proof of time.

The consensus mechanism solves the decentralized trust problem. How can a group of unrelated nodes cooperate with each other to quickly and reliably complete the packaging and verification of transactions in the block, that is, reach a consensus? Bitcoin gives the earliest answer, namely PoW (Proof of Work, Proof of Work Mechanism). Under the PoW mechanism, major nodes need to compete in computing power. By solving random mathematical problems, the node that gets the answer first can pack blocks and obtain a certain amount of Bitcoin as a reward for maintaining the network. This mechanism has high security, but it needs to consume a huge amount of energy. Meanwhile, there is a high hardware threshold for participating nodes. PoS (proof of stake) mechanism solves the problem of energy consumption and reduces the threshold of mining participation. In addition, because the interests of large shareholders who control most tokens are closely related to the whole network, major shareholders will spontaneously maintain network security. However, due to the complexity of the implementation of the PoS mechanism, it is easy to generate vulnerabilities.

The PoT (proof of time) mechanism is different from the previous two. The PoT mechanism does not need to consume computing power to mine, nor does it have to stake tokens. The only thing you need to participate in the PoT mechanism is your time. This makes the cost of becoming a node under the PoT mechanism very low, and anyone can become a node of the blockchain network. The design of the PoT mechanism is expected to help us re-examine the concept of time in a decentralized way, so that we can use limited time to create greater value.

PoT mechanism and Analog

The first blockchain project with the PoT mechanism is Analog. The goal of the project is to build a Layer 0 blockchain and provide time data support for the whole chain in the future of the web 3 world by providing a decentralized time graph containing massive timestamp data. The time data on Analog mainly exists in the form of event data. Many events occur successively in the real world or online world. Their occurrence times will be linked into a time axis and recorded on the blockchain without trust for use by dApp or other blockchains. For example, when a user purchases an NFT at a certain time, it is a piece of time data; The dealer purchased a batch of production materials at a certain time, and the hospital accepted a patient at a certain time. These are time data in the real world.

Image: Analog official website

In the Analog project, the PoT mechanism is actually a variant of dpos (Delegated Proof of Stake) mechanism. This model is Elite Governance in the real world and enjoys the advantages of strong expansibility and high performance. According to the white paper of the Analog project, the Analog network can support hundreds of millions of nodes at most, the fastest block time can reach 0.4 microseconds, and the TPS can reach 65000. This transaction processing speed has reached more than 4700 times that of the Ethereum main network.

Specifically, the network nodes under the Analog area ecosystem are divided into four categories: Publishers, Time Nodes, Time Electors and Tesseract Nodes. Among them, Publishers can submit time data to Analog network; Time Nodes need to be responsible for confirming the on-chain time data. Meanwhile, the power of Time Nodes is related to the number of tokens staked, which is similar to the PoS mechanism; Time Electors is responsible for submitting the packaged block data to the chain. Since only one node can submit the block at a time, the probability of a node becoming a Time Elector is also related to the number of tokens staked. In addition, there is a ranking mechanism for the determination of Time Nodes and Time Electors nodes. The ranking is related to the tenure time, verification readiness and the ranking of adjacent nodes. The top ranked nodes are more likely to become Time Nodes or Time Electors nodes. The last node is Tesseract Nodes. This type of node is responsible for obtaining event time data from external blockchain in the ecosystem, and is also responsible for cross chain business of the ecology.

Therefore, we can see that Publishers is the most common node type in the ecosystem. Anyone can submit time data and become the Publisher node of the system; Time Nodes and Time Electors are similar to block validators and proponents in DPoS mechanism respectively; Tesseract Nodes are mainly related to cross chain. There are two steps to reach a consensus in the PoT mechanism. The first step is soft voting. In this stage, the randomly selected block proposer (Time Nodes) will package the time data provided by the node, sign appropriately, calculate VDF and broadcast it to other Time Nodes; Then the system enters the hard voting stage. A group of 1000 Time Nodes selected by pseudo-random method will form a committee to confirm the submitted blocks by hard voting. After the voting is passed, the blocks will be officially linked. Nodes that successfully confirm the block will receive the native token $ANLOG as an incentive.

Image: illustration of PoT consensus mechanism

Analog token economics

In September 2021, Analog started the ic0 of the on-chain native token $ANLOG. $ANLOG can be used to pay network fees on the chain, obtain additional income through staking, and participate in project governance. From the perspective of token economics, $ANLOG has the function of encouraging the nodes to submit, package and validate time data and maintain the normal operation of the network. The total number of tokens is 13.8 trillion, of which 38% will be allocated to the community, 26.8% for private sales, 1.6% for public sales, 19% for the project team and project suggestion providers, and the remaining 14.6% will be retained in the project’s treasury.

Image: Analog Tokenomics

Analog based on the PoT consensus mechanism has broad application prospects. Imagine that in the financial field of "time is money", Analog can provide enterprises with traceable and consensus free completion time records to help enterprises avoid financial risks and improve capital efficiency; In the medical field of "time is life", patients' medical records can be completely stored on the chain in the form of event time, and can be quickly retrieved through API, so as to improve the operation efficiency of the medical system; In the field of supply chain, every transaction and shipment of goods can be traced on the chain, which greatly improves the reliability of the supply chain.There are countless examples.

Author: Gate.io Researcher Edward H. Translator: Joy Z.
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment advice.
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