This article is a quick overview of design decisions, and optimizations Tagion embraced to achieve the highest possible speed of transactions.

Oversimplified, when transacting on Bitcoin, you need around 10 minutes on average to reach high certainty that the transaction is “processed”. On the VISA network, similar certainty is achieved in 2 to 3 seconds, since it is a centralized solution.

In any permissionless blockchain, there is a compromise between speed and security. Bitcoin is an edge case, being one of the slowest, yet arguably the most secure one. Here is a great article related to this compromise:

Blockchains are so slow, primarily because of the security mechanism called Proof of Work. It was designed to be slow, excluding the possibility of multiple Nodes “proposing” their block to the chain at the same time.

Tagion is different because it doesn’t use Blockchain at all. The security of the network was moved to another layer; thus, there is nothing that artificially slows down the speed of transaction validation.

Tagion Network can process the same amount of transactions as VISA, on a similar scale, according to early calculations and tests of the network.

Two Components That Make The Difference

I mentioned that Tagion doesn’t use Blockchain, yet obviously, it is a distributed permissionless cryptocurrency. So what does it use instead? The Tagion Hashgraph and Tagion Gossip Protocol.

Tagion Hashgraph

As mentioned earlier, Hashgraph doesn’t have artificial slowness and a few other problems. Some even call it “the next-generation Blockchain”.

Tagion Hashgraph is aBFT (asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant) out of the box. It is also leaderless, meaning no one in the network can choose which transactions go in, and which not.

There is a lot to unpack when it comes to Hashgraph, and we will do it in a separate article quite soon.

Tagion Transaction Speed Symbol

Tagion Gossip Protocol

Apart from consensus itself, there is also a communication protocol — how information spreads across the network. It must be efficient in terms of bandwidth and amount of messages between Nodes.

The Tagion Gossip Protocol is optimized in both cases. Nodes only send information that is needed, in the least amount of messages possible.

Fun fact: One of the meanings behind word Tagion, comes form word Tachyon — a hypothetical particle, that is faster than a speed of light. Read more on Wikipedia.

Conclusion

Both consensus mechanism and data communication protocol determine the speed of transactions. In both cases, Tagion uses state of the art technology, evolved over many years this industry exists.