The Burst Dymaxion is a marvel in terms of tx scaling. Using the concept of off-chain layers (asynchronous, tangle-based), we found a way to leverage the originally quite restricted on-chain capacity of 1 tps to virtually infinite off-chain tps.

There are more aspects to the Burst Dymaxion like anonymous transactions, but the predominant concept presented in the white paper was that of scaling Burst up.

The first part of the Pre-Dymaxion HF1 – happening at block height 500k – also scaled up the on-chain capacity of Burst and it did so significantly. Originally planned as a 4-fold tx capacity (4 tps) increase, we got theoretically up to 80 tps. Granted – for specific types of transactions, but in the end, Burst now has effectively 5-7 times the tx capacity of BTC.

Since the Pre-Dymaxion HF1, the block chain was never under more load than 3% of its theoretical capacity – and that was while some alias squatters were doing heavy duty work. Transactional scaling is currently the least of our problems as we could almost instantly scale on-chain tx capacity to 480 tps (1MB block size) or 1000 tps (2MB block size) and there is more:

Private Chains

Independent of any PoCC efforts, developer BurstJack presented the concept of PCHAINS – Private Chains – anchored to the main chain via the messaging system. See also this Reddit writeup and the documentation. This concept is orthogonal to the Dymaxion Layer scaling, meaning both can work at the same time.

Take this and the scaling potential of the underlying main chain and the question becomes “Just how much infinite tx capacity would you like?”.

Qualitative Things

In our “1 Year of PoCC” text we said, there are “both quantitative as well as qualitative [things]” in the pipeline. Scaling is in the quantitative domain – it’s just “more of it”, in this case tps.

We were quite surprised, that the HF1 didn’t catapult (or at least start to move) Burst into the Top100 range, because that’s where it now factually belongs, both feature-wise and tech-wise. It made us think: If the market does not honor that – be it oblivion, irrationality or whatever – what would the market honor?

We knew that monetary-wise, Burst is still too decoupled from the “real world”. The Dymaxion is great, but as the units of account transferred on Dymaxion Layers are basically “colored tokens”, they have no intrinsic value. Of course, intrinsic value can emerge in time, but it’s a long and tiresome process.

One can observe how Burst Assets have to fight with “gaining and keeping intrinsic value” and eventually most of them fail to do so. A Dymaxion Layer counters this – a little – by providing the possibility to lock up a collateral (in BURST) which is guaranteed to be disseminated among the DL participants upon closing of the DL. Still, Burst as such is volatile and in the eyes of many market participants not suitable to serve as some price-stabilizing hedge.

Divine Insight

There was a query to use the Burst Asset Exchange for CO 2 Emissions trading (e.g. CORSIA). However, the pricing should be in USD/EUR and not Burst, because no one wanted to cope with the volatility. Burst can’t do that now. At about the same time we inspected some top20 coins more thoroughly “what do they have what we don’t?” and saw what Stellar proposes: “blockchain based Fiat transactions”. Done in an incredibly crude technical way, but that’s another story.

And that’s when it struck us. Really divine insight you might say – suddenly everything fell in the right place. We are thrilled.

The CIPs 8-11 prepare the ground for what we call “Tethered Assets”. A Tethered Asset (TA) is basically an asset whose tokens are tethered to “real-world values”. These values can be currencies like the USD,EUR,… or commodities like “1 gram of gold”. The fascinating thing about TAs is that they keep their value independent of the current value of Burst.

As such, they provide many novel possibilities!

They can serve as a hedge. You do not need to go all the way BURST -> BTC -> USD to protect yourself from falling Burst prices. You just acquire a USD TA or EUR TA. Which you can always do. They can serve as a means to transfer Fiat via blockchain. As you can do with Asset Transfer, you can do the same with TA transfer. When you transfer – say – 50 USD TA tokens, it is indistinguishable(!) from having transferred 50 USD. Because of these properties, Burst suddenly becomes a crypto DEX (decentralized exchange) with fiat and commodity coupling.

How To?

If you read through CIP8-11 you will see some familiar and maybe some unfamiliar concepts, used in combination in a very novel way. Burst gets kind of a “Proof-of-Burn” for TA acquisition, while actually not destroying coins, but doing something equivalent: Donating them “to all others”. Think of it as buying from the community by means of a Multi-Out on steroids.

On the other end of the rope (the “all others”), Burst suddenly has a “Proof-of-Stake”, because your balance can earn you Burst. This naturally emerges as complement of the “Proof-of-Burn”. These concepts are bound to the novel possibilities of TAs only! PoC mining (ensuring all the transactions, increasing Burst supply) is untouched by all this. No worries – this doesn’t change or take any existing feature away from Burst. Its existing features are good as they are – they just have been missing their … yang.

With all this, intrinsic value can emerge easily in the Burst ecosystem and – it cannot be destroyed! Once you created a TA token it is there to stay and its value is there to stay. Sure, the USD could go to sh*t and so would the USD TA, but then Burst would become your hedge – or your “1g of gold” TA tokens.

All of this combined, the Burst community instantly becomes the FED, the ECB, the IMF – all of them at once and some more.

When Dymaxion?

We believe the TAs are a strong concept – as is the Dymaxion. Right now we feel that scaling Burst even more is not the topmost priority as we already have a tx capacity we currently leave unused by almost two orders of magnitude. Even if our community now grew 50-fold (and this can happen), we would have enough reserve to scale the coin in time.

TAs and the Dymaxion can also perfectly complement each other, because once we have TAs, we could use these as collateral and therefore leverage tethering to off-chain. Suddenly, a Dymaxion layer would not just operate with “Starbucks or KFC Dollars”, but actually tokens that would keep the value of e.g. a real-world USD.

Unless there is an overwhelming sentiment in the community against it, we strongly propose to implement TAs before the Dymaxion because we believe it’s evident what they should do with the Burst price. We would offer, en passant, features that Stellar offers – just better.

We would become a natural crypto DEX with fiat and commodity binding. There are about a dozen tokens in the top50 that try to do this – just worse.

Finally, we would have a very strong, non-volatile basis for DL collaterals because when the markets finally recognize what we have, we will need all the scaling the Dymaxion can provide.

We therefore ask you to be in favor of this Pre-Dymaxion HF2 “Tethered Assets” proposal.