Dec 30, 2019

In 2019, Nebulas has made great strides in it’s roadmap including the release of Nebulas NOVA which was a fundamental update to the network and has also released the community collaboration platform Go Nebulas which launched on-chain governance and took a key step towards achieving Nebulas’ vision.

In 2020, we will continue to implement Nebulas’ vision of “Let everyone obtain value from decentralized collaboration fairly,” improve the performance of the Nebulas Mainnet and promote decentralized collaboration.

The 2020 roadmap is broken down into three sections: development, research and community operation.

Development

Proof of Devotion(PoD)

Background:

In November of 2019, the Nebulas PoD Node Strategy began. At its core is the Proof of Devotion (PoD) consensus mechanism which can be summarized as a mechanism that measures the size of a contribution from the community which includes the consensus and the governance mechanism. Through the decentralized selection process of selecting network nodes, a consensus committee will be established and as a result, will decentralize the main network. In addition, the governance committee will be composed of high-quality consensus nodes that will be organizing community governance in a representative system.

The node decentralization strategy will launch on the testnet January of 2020 with the mainnet receiving this upgrade shortly afterwards. This will be the largest upgrade of the mainnet since the release of Nebulas NOVA in March of 2019 and will be the inauguration of PoD.

Changes and Goals:

Upgrade of consensus mechanism. The PoD mainnet consensus algorithm will be upgraded to improve scalability and solve community development consensus to avoid centralization. Governance mechanism design development and implementation. We will ensure that community governance nodes can make decisions smoothly and can govern Nebulas community proposals and projects via on-chain voting.

Nebulas community collaboration platform Go Nebulas upgrade

Background:

Nebulas will continue the exercise of decentralized collaboration in 2020 and the Nebulas community collaboration platform, Go Nebulas will be upgraded with it. Since its launch in March of 2019, there have been more than 220 projects and over 150 community proposals on Go Nebulas which includes core projects operated by the Nebulas team, various bounty rewards and projects proposed by the community. This platform is where the community can speak freely and where the PoD governance mechanism comes into play.

Changes and Goals:

PoD governance. PoD will comply with the changes in the new governance mechanism to achieve decentralized collaboration. Platform upgrades. Go Nebulas will receive upgrades in both collaboration and incentives. Increasing community collaboration and interaction scenarios, as well as Go Nebulas’ incentives. In addition, we can promote the emergence of more high-quality projects to help community members better collaborate with the ecosystem.

Nebulas Virtual Machine NVM2.0

Background:

Nebulas Virtual Machine (NVM) has supported the Chrome V8 engine since 2018 thereby making it possible for Nebulas to support smart contract coding in multiple languages. It is one of the first public blockchains to support smart contracts written in JavaScript. In 2020, Nebulas will continue to optimize the performance of the NVM and will launch version 2.0.

Changes and Goals:

Optimize autonomous upgrade capabilities. With the release of Nebulas NOVA in early 2019, some functions of Nebulas Force were implemented through the Nebulas Blockchain Executable Environment (NBRE) thereby providing an executable environment. This has been Nebulas’ initial attempt to upgrading the core protocol of the public blockchain autonomously and has provided valuable experience for implementing NF. In 2020, we will continue to increase the speed of core protocol upgrades via on-chain mechanisms, guarantee ease of use, compatibility and officially implement NF. Cross-chain capabilities. Nebulas Rank is an scoring algorithm that measures the value of global blockchain data. Naturally, NR must support cross-chain capabilities. Based on the development of NF, the NVM will have cross-chain capabilities thereby laying a solid foundation for analysis and research on cross-chain data to data interactions.

Development Tools

Background:

The Nebulas Mainnet went online March of 2018 and has released asset management and development tools. In 2020, development tools will be further improved to prepare developers and community members to further utilize the Nebulas blockchain.

Changes and Goals:

Various data interface API upgrades. We will make it more convenient for the community to build their own Nebulas wallet, explorer and more. Various wallet client optimizations. These optimizations include a desktop client, command-line client, various browser wallet plug-ins and more which will support NAS and NRC20 tokens such as NAX. We will also add more features for the web wallet including the support for cold-wallet(offline) signing. Developer debugging environment upgrade. This includes the optimization of various IDEs, visualization operations and improved examples. Complete node related tools and documentation. This includes support tools such as revenue calculation tools and ranking calculation tools.

Among them, the Nebulas Foundation will encourage core project changes and release necessary reward projects. Community members can also contribute ideas and develop projects through the governance mechanisms.

Research

In 2020, Nebulas will continue to research blockchain technology and make advances in the following two directions thereby combining Nebulas’ own characteristics while exploring new possibilities of blockchain:

Data analysis and application scenario exploration. In 2020, Nebulas will continue to focus on on-chain data and interactions. Based on the results of data analysis, we will explore new scenarios for Nebulas Rank. Data Privacy. We will explore on-chain data encryption such as zero-knowledge proof, secure multi-party computing and more. Nebulas will focus on privacy issues and explore new research on data security.

Community

Developer motivation. Nebulas will initiate the Developer Incentive Protocol 2.0 which will Include: Community project evaluation; University cooperation, support for targeted research projects; Promote healthy development by the community. Decentralized collaborative practice. With the start of the node planned governance mechanism, Nebulas’ decentralized collaboration has entered a critical phase. The governance committee composed of community node block contributors will conduct on-chain voting review of community proposals and projects. In the first half of 2020, we will collect feedback, gradually optimize the collaborative process and build a healthy ecosystem with community members. nextDAO is the next generation of DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) which will focus on on-chain interaction and collaboration. By providing decentralized financial tools and products, redefining the token economy, leveraging the community through smart assets, discovering new business scenarios and promoting the implementation of ecosystem applications, Nebulas will use the nextDAO platform to develop a better experience for the Nebulas community and beyond. These changes will make Nebulas a more open and inclusive experience while building a better DAO.