On July 1, 2018, Elastos achieved a major milestone in its ongoing development. We are proud to announce that we have successfully upgraded our main chain to support the release of the first Elastos ID Sidechain.

The Elastos Ecosystem employs a main chain — sidechain infrastructure, and the release of the first sidechain signifies the beginning of a vast deployment of new sidechains all with unique and varied purposes. The ID Sidechain is merely the first, yet it is an integral part of the ecosystem, because it will enable universal trust for the new internet that Elastos is creating.

The ID Sidechain, like its main chain counterpart, will also be merged mined with Bitcoin, allowing it to receive the same secure hashpower. Bitcoin miners will be able to use their equipment to not only secure the Bitcoin blockchain, but also the Elastos main chain and Elastos ID Sidechain. All future sidechains built on Elastos will also be given the option to employ the same PoW mechanism as Bitcoin, which will allow them to also be merge mined with the Elastos main chain and Bitcoin, and secure the potentially thousands of applications that will run off of these sidechains. Miners will be given a small transaction fee in ELA for securing all sidechains that are merged mined with the Elastos Main Chain.

This upgrade mainly includes the following:

1. Support assets transfers from the main chain to sidechains

2. Support assets transfers from the sidechains to the main chain

3. Support sidechains to merge mine through the main chain

The new arbitrator nodes and the ID chain nodes that exist as a sidechain will allow:

1. Support assets transfer from main chain to ID sidechain

2. Create ID and store ID related information on ID sidechain

3. Transfer assets from ID sidechain back to the main chain

4. Support ID chain to merge mine with main chain.