Dynamic Blockchain Expansion

One major change we have been working on is optimizing the characteristics of the dynamic expansion function of the blockchain, for which the most current version is found in the Proposal section of the CLI commands. To put it simply, this functionality allows for the block producers to change certain parameters of the block consensus to optimize the network without causing hard forks or having to manually update each node to the new state.

The way we have designed the dynamic expansion governance is to arrange a weekly cyclic election process, where the nodes producing the top 21 number of blocks are elected to the governance committee of the blockchain. This means that to be able to propose changes to the block consensus, a candidate node will first have to be voted in (see the previous section on the voting feature), and then remain in production mode for long enough to come out as one of the top 21 producers for the current week. This election will take place every week in the early hours of Monday UTC time. It is our opinion that this design ensures that only block producers that have experience on the network are able to submit suggestions for optimization, instead of random nodes proposing changes that might not at all be beneficial for network functionality or stability.

Examples of parameters that the governance committee members can propose changes to include such characteristics as lower gas limit for transactions, maximum block size and maximum size for individual smart contract. The latter limit is imposed to eliminate the risk of malicious large contracts causing stability issues on the blockchain.

Once a proposal is submitted, the nodes comprising the governance committee will vote on the proposal and at which block height it will come into effect if approved. Approval requires a 2/3rd majority, otherwise the proposal will be rejected. Once a proposal has been approved by a 2/3rd majority of the committee member nodes, the proposal will automatically go into effect at the prearranged block height as each node will automatically record the approved proposal and its decided upon block height. This removes the need for cumbersome manual updating of the nodes and ensures smooth operation of the nodes and thus the blockchain.

We are continuing to work on the dynamic expansion feature of the blockchain — it’s close to complete due to the addition of the features described in the previous section, but we still have some polishing we would like to do before the official launch.