Write software without writing any code?

A blockchain that can achieve 10 million (no it’s not a typo) transactions per second?

Even to a relative newbie to crypto, much less a seasoned crypto enthusiast, it looks like we are entering the world of fantasy. Pink unicorns and castles floating in the air are less difficult to imagine. However, Sparkster is confident it can deliver this in a real world scenario.

In the real world new companies building their product often struggle to find developers with the skills required in an evolving tech environment. Employing, retaining and paying them is a concern. Wouldn’t these companies jump at the chance of putting their product together with colourful building blocks of code with little or no programming experience?

When I first saw Sajjad Daya, CEO of Sparkster, putting together a simple program by fitting blocks together, I was struck at the sheer simplicity of it. The blocks reminded me of colourful coding blocks used by kids on their first steps into programming. It turns out that this actual coding game called Scratch MIT was in fact what inspired Sparkster’s coding platform. These simple blocks hide the code behind them and enable new businesses to design their products quickly and intuitively without the necessity of knowing any of the typical coding languages which would have entailed employing developers — to say nothing of the ‘mismatch’ between management and developers as to exactly how the end product should look and function.

A present problem for all blockchains is that the ‘distributed hash table’ has to be updated across thousands of servers so that consensus can be reached. Different blockchain companies are attempting to solve this bottle neck for instance with the use of sharding (Zilliqa and Quarkchain) which breaks the distributed hash table down into pieces. However, the problem still remains that the ‘entire’ system needs to be aware of each transaction.

Sparkster think they have solved this issue by breaking the distributed hash table down into groups or cells which are not obliged to communicate with each other therefore radically improving transactions per second. The thinking here is that each group/cell would typically be a business or collection of businesses interacting with each other. Why would they need to have their transactions updated with completely different businesses in different groups/cells? Sparkster use the analogy of a human cell that when it splits apart the new cells no longer communicate with each other. Isolating companies from each other enables the high throughput necessary to achieving fantastically high transaction speeds. The more the network grows — the more the transaction rate grows.

Up to now Sparkster has achieved over a thousand tps per cell. Another borrowed idea, this time from Ripple, uses FBAS (Federated Byzantine Agreement System) in order to avoid having to reach consensus from 51% of the network. Instead they are able to reach consensus with just a small part of the network and do so much quicker.

Security is covered by bringing in yet another borrowed idea. This time Sparkster uses Zcash zk-SNARKs in order to verify information without allowing the verifying party to know what that information is. Sajjad Daya, CEO of Sparkster uses another analogy to explain this when he gives the example of a door passcode. If you are able to pass through the door several times then it must mean that you know the passcode.

Sparkster is building in multi-chain operability. They have already integrated Ethereum and Iota smart transactions and they are working on including Stellar, Cardano and Neo in the near future with more networks to come further down the line. Decentralised clouds are going to be so much more cost effective than traditional centralised cloud computing. Companies utilising centralised cloud computing providers have the cost factored in by these providers of their servers, buildings, maintenance etc. Therefore, the decentralised cloud computing offered by Sparkster, with none of these overheads, is a tempting alternative difficult to resist and is the shape of things to come in the future.

Sparkster does have its detractors and doubters but a large and experienced team, big backers and a rapidly growing community are testament to the excitement that this project is causing. I will be watching this space with huge interest to see if they are able to deliver.

The above is a review of Sparkster and I am not attempting to give any business or investment advice. Please do your own research on a project before investing.