FLETA’s proof-of-formulation (POF) consensus mechanism is key to their ambitions of being a highly scalable smart contract platform. Another platform which has the same aim as ours is EOS, which is why many people in our community are curious about how EOS’s delegated proof-of-stake (DPOS) measures up to POF. In this article, we are going to discuss both DPOS and POF and show you how they measure up with each other.

EOS DPOS

The idea behind DPOS is to have the network elect 21 block producers who will be in charge of the consensus mechanism.

Voting Process

The first step of DPOS is the voting of the producers. EOS uses a voting system called approval voting, where the top 21 block producer candidates, as elected by the total number of votes received, are allowed to produce blocks. To place their vote, EOS holders must stake tokens for three days and each user can vote up to 30 candidates. Individual voting power is directly related to the amount of EOS staked. So, if a user has 1000 EOS staked, she can cast 1000 votes (hypothetically speaking) for each of up to 30 block producers.

The voting takes place entirely on-chain wherein a users signs of on a transaction with their private key indicating which producer they’d like to vote for. If at any point, the user unstakes their tokens, their vote won’t count anymore. After the voting process, the top 21 candidates becomes the block producers and the rest become backup producers.

Block Production

The producers are shuffled around using a pseudorandom number derived from the block time and then they start producing blocks. To ensure that regular block production is maintained and that block time is kept to 3 seconds, producers are punished for not participating by being removed from consideration. A producer has to produce at least one block every 24 hours to be in consideration.

The DPOS system doesn’t experience a fork because instead of competing to find blocks, the producers will have to co-operate instead. In the event of a fork, the consensus switches automatically to the longest chain.

FLETA POF

Our interpretation of the POS algorithm is via proof-of-formulation (POF). It has two actors:

Formulators act as the block generators in the FLETA platform.

act as the block generators in the FLETA platform. Observers allow for real-time confirmation of the blocks that are generated and prevent double spending.

Formulators

Formulators are ranked by the following formula:

Score: uint64(Phase) << 32 + uint64(binary.LittenEndian.Uint32(hash[:4]))

In the formula above:

“Hash” serves as the hash value of the previous block

“Phase” is a time-related value which shows how many times the RankTable has “turned” or gone through all of the formulators for block generation.

Each formulator will get at least one opportunity during each phase to generate a block. Formulators are divided among the following:

General Formulator.

Hyper Formulator.

General Formulator

Anyone who wants to take part in FLETA’s token mining can do so by becoming a general Formulator. To do this, they need to sign in to the FLETA Formulator Portal and stake 200,000 FLETA tokens. They don’t need to set up and operate a server of their own since General Formulator nodes are automatically generated and managed in FLETA’s cloud network. All they need to do is to pay a server maintenance fee depending on their level (Alpha, Sigma, or Omega).

As mentioned, there are three levels to General Formulators — Alpha, Sigma, and Omega.

Alpha Formulator: Every general Formulator will start off as an Alpha Formulator. Server maintenance fee is $22.5 USD/month (excl. VAT).

Every general Formulator will start off as an Alpha Formulator. Server maintenance fee is $22.5 USD/month (excl. VAT). Sigma Formulator: After running four Alpha Formulator nodes for a minimum of 30 days, operators can upgrade their Formulators to one Sigma Formulator. The Sigma nodes are 1.3 times more efficient than original Alpha Formulator nodes. Server maintenance fee is $65 USD/month (excl. VAT).

After running four Alpha Formulator nodes for a minimum of 30 days, operators can upgrade their Formulators to one Sigma Formulator. The Sigma nodes are 1.3 times more efficient than original Alpha Formulator nodes. Server maintenance fee is $65 USD/month (excl. VAT). Omega Formulator: After running two Sigma Formulator nodes for at least 30 days, operators can upgrade their Formulators to one Omega Formulator. The Omega nodes are 1.5 times more efficient than original Alpha Formulator nodes. Server maintenance fee is $85 USD/month (excl. VAT).

To sum up, you may lock up the same amount of FLETA tokens, but Sigma and Omega Formulators have greater efficiency at a lower cost according to their levels. You can upgrade your Formulators on the FLETA Formulator Portal.

Hyper Formulator

Hyper Formulator nodes have been created to attract real-world business to take part in FLETA’s ecosystem. Here are some features of Hyper Formulators:

Hyper formulators will be divided into Validators and Delegators.

All hyper formulators operate on the Validators’ servers.

Validators should own at least an 8-core CPU and stake 5,000,000 FLETAs each.

Join as a Delegator is relatively easy. To join as a Delegator, all you need to do is give a minimum of 100 FLETA tokens to the Validator of your choice. Each Validator will have their own commission rate and credibility level. After that, whenever a Validator receives block rewards, the delegator will get a share of it as well.

Validators are extremely important to our ecosystem, which is why they go through an extensive screening and vetting process. All the Validator nodes are as powerful and efficient as Omega Formulator nodes, by default. Validators also provide extra security to the system by confirming blocks which have been validated by the Observer nodes.

Observers

In simple terms, the primary role of the Observers is to prevent DDoS attacks and to maintain the security of the entire blockchain network. Five observer nodes are assigned to each Formulator group, 3 of which are required to sign off on a generated block for it to be confirmed.

Conclusion: DPOS and POF

We hope that you have clearly understood how each of the mechanism works. EOS has reached a high of 3,996 tps while FLETA has achieved 14,000 tps (tried and tested).

Another clear advantage that FLETA is more decentralized than EOS. In EOS, only the 21 producers elected are in charge of the consensus mechanism. This makes them vulnerable to cartel formation, wherein a small group of powerful nodes can collude and take control of the entire ecosystem. FLETA, on the other hand, allows for the creation of General Formulators where anyone from the ecosystem can stake their tokens and take part in the consensus if they want to.

When it comes to methodology and performance, POF is faster and more secure than DPOS.