Last week, our analyst Maxwell Arnold attended the InvestorIntel conference in Toronto. Currently in its seventh year, it is a gathering of some of the top names in investing, as well as leaders from companies in the blockchain, nanotech, and biotech spheres. Maxwell spoke on two panels, and gave a company presentation of Global Blockchain — which included an overview of Laser!

As you might have predicted, there were a lot of questions from audience members who were curious about Laser. They asked some really good questions — and in today’s blog posting, we will be featuring some of them to share the knowledge with our readers.

Maxwell Arnold (third from right) on the IQ Race discussion panel (Image Source: InvestorIntel’s Twitter)

How can transactions be near-instant?

Laser’s ability to make cryptocurrency transactions near-instant is based on an overlay protocol that simplifies the validation of transactions. Laser relies on trusted servicenodes to provide near-instant transactions. These servicenodes provide a “pseudo-confirmation” from their observations, and a transaction can be validated by the absence of negative confirmations. That is, if there are no dissenting opinions about the transaction, it is considered to be valid.

Now, that sounds like it could be manipulated, right? Not so much. These servicenodes are incentivized to behave honestly by having put up collateral. As such, their operators are inclined to not tamper with the confirmation process. When a transaction is broadcasted, servicenodes that are not party to the transaction act as observers to it, and can provide a positive vote if they do not detect any problems. If they do detect a problem and provide a positive vote anyway (which might be done by a rogue node attempting to validate a fraudulent transaction), this can be refuted by negative votes from other servicenodes. Once the rogue servicenode’s behaviour is detected, it is grounds to have their collateral forfeited — which, in most cases, will be worth more than what they may have gained from validating a fraudulent transaction. Section 5.5.1 of our whitepaper goes into more detail about how this works.

Will Laser have its own wallet?

Yes. As we discussed in last week’s blog post, there will be a Laser network wallet which is capable of holding Laser’s Photon tokens, as well as Bitcoin and Ethereum. It will also support EOS, Neo, and Ripple in its next version, with plans for many more to be supported later on. This will be a key instrument in making blockchains interoperable for the exchange of cryptocurrencies.

What blockchains can use Laser?

Any blockchain with the multi-signature capability can use Laser, which is a property of most major blockchains. Laser was designed with flexibility in mind, and by being essentially a “one-size-fits-all” solution that can work seamlessly with the majority of blockchains, compatibility will only ever be a concern in the vast minority of cases.

Where is Laser currently in the development process?

The very short answer to this is “close to being ready”. We will be holding our crowdsale in mid-June, and launching Laser official sometime in mid-July. To keep on top of these developments, follow us on Twitter.