Nexus Blockchain – A Guide for Beginners

Whether you like it or not, Nexus Blockchain is probably the most technologically advanced cryptocurrency in the market. Our simplified step-by-step guide for beginners is designed to help you realize what makes it so special compared to other projects.

Note that this guide is very brief and is only focused on beginners.

For detailed information, visit the official website or click the links in this article.

What is Nexus? Everything You Need to Know

First of all, Nexus is built to be quantum-resistant, with a three-dimensional blockchain. The project is completely written from the ground up and offers a list of benefits and features compared to other cryptocurrencies in the market.

Some major benefits Nexus offers include an API for developers, automated key management, a virtual machine-based contract engine, and a lower-level database that is tenfold faster than any other known competitors at Ripple, Google, or Oracle.

And the absolutely best thing is the whole Nexus codebase is open-source and can be used by any other project.

The cryptocurrency space has come a long way since it’s inception. Today businesses and organizations require much more fluent technologies that can perform applications in the real world. Nexus accomplishes this without the known bottlenecks that exist on pretty much every other blockchain infrastructure.

This is one of the many reasons why the latest Nexus activation (Tritium) was developed with a completely rewritten 7-layer software stack. This is because these older underlying stacks which run on every other coin are simply incapable of handling the amount of data Nexus can.

Nexus 7-layer software stack was created with a completely new design for how data can be operated and managed. This 7-layer software stack allows the transfer of ownership between users and different types of conditions, which can be defined to operate based on behavioral actions.

Nexus also combines the latest, most advanced security standards from professional audits, of open-source code reviews to utilizing the most advanced quantum-resistant cryptography algorithms, such as argon2 and Falcon.

Here are some key points that make nexus remarkable technology.

An API for DApps

A decentralized login system

A register-based contract engine

Nexus Lower Level Library

Three-Dimensional Chain

An API for DApps

Unlike most other blockchain projects such as Ethereum and EOS, Nexus DApp development is API-driven, meaning there is no internal separate coding language, such as Solidity that must be learned. Instead, decentralized applications can now be written by anyone who understands basic web development.

The API can also be used for even complicated tasks such as Digital Asset Licensing, Financial Assets, Records, Licenses, Certificates, and Securitized Token Offerings (STOs).

To add flexibility, a developer can make non-standard API calls with custom conditions to provide additional functionality to the DApp that is unavailable through the standard API. This can be further augmented with Domain-Specific Languages on the lower API layer.

Nexus’ API makes developing DApps as easy as developing website applications and creates a much more secure environment while also reducing the overall cost of development.

A decentralized login system

Nexus has put some serious effort into making usability as simple as logging onto a website, while still improving the current security standards.

To make this possible, Nexus has developed something unique called Signature Chains (Sigchains), which is both a decentralized authentication system and a new way to manage cryptographic keys. The user can now manage their cryptographic keys without the need for storing external data such as wallet.dat files used by most cryptocurrency wallets. This gives the user a better experience managing their keys because Sigchains live on a mathematical hyperspace, and there is no need for disks or clouds and no more corrupted files.

Signature Chains also create a better environment for DApp developers to build with because Sigchains can be compared to a private blockchain. Sigchains provide the same foundation, with features such as managing assets, while also maintaining pseudo-anonymous privacy.

Nexus also features higher overall efficiency by reducing the required data that needs to be stored, and the ability to use a variety of cryptographic algorithms such as Falcon, for increased quantum resistance.

However, the main fundamental aspect that makes Sigchains so special is the fact that it decouples the private key from the user account. All that means is the private key becomes obsolete anytime a new transaction is generated. This produces much higher levels of security compared to normal blockchains which continually reuse the private keys.

A register-based contract engine

The Nexus architecture was developed for the needs of the real world. This means its underlying technology operates more like modern contracts in the business world, or between the people. With the additions of immutable blockchain and Sigchains, it is possible to transact rights and ownerships.

The Nexus contract engine is built on a versatile 7-layer software stack designed for this very purpose, it allows the exchange of data, between users, and operations can also be defined by conditions, such as behavior actions.

The Nexus 7-layer Software Stack not only provides much more functionalities than normal smart contracts, but it also scales with the growing demand and can be implemented on anything from digital rights management to music rights, land titles and so on.

Contrary to other blockchain-powered virtual machines like Ethereum, which still use the old stack structure, the Nexus virtual machine with its 7-layer software stack, is much more robust with improved efficiency gained through the use of registers. This 7-layer software stack makes development on Nexus not only easier but much more efficient and scalable.

Nexus Lower Level Library (LLL)

Unlike most other blockchain projects that are built on top of current web technology, Nexus stands out above the others still using older technologies.

Colin Cantrell, the main developer of Nexus, realized early on that building new, advanced internet applications would be useless if the underlying technology cannot perform at the same level.

Most modern internet applications are still built on top of this old, simply-not-capable-enough technology. The Nexus Lower Level Libary, on the other hand, is a high-performance template, designed to power the new merging web technologies.

The LLL is simply powerful and super lightweight. It contains three main components: Cryptography (LLC), Database (LLD), and Protocol (LLP).

The LLC stands for Cryptography and contains all the necessary Quantum Resistant cryptography elements.

The LLD stands for Database, and at the time of writing it outperforms Google’s LevelDB which is used by the majority of blockchain projects by orders of magnitude, performing well over 450k requests a second. This makes it easily one, if not the most advanced database engine in the world.

The Lower Level Library was created as the foundation of the upcoming TAO framework, while also being open-source, it is an amazing example for other projects to learn from and adapt going forward.

It’s also worth mentioning that Nexus has been integrated with CoinKit tipping bot, and thanks to LLL architecture it handles the on-chain transactions like a champion.

The Three-Dimensional Chain

Since it’s launch in 2014, Nexus has been one of the most innovative cryptocurrencies in the space. The reason for this was by being the first implementing three consensus mining channels, making Nexus since its’ start, the most quantum resistant cryptocurrency around.

However, Nexus has come a long way from those days, and now with the latest Tritium activation, the three mining channels are much more advanced than just that.

Today this technology is called the Three-Dimensional Chain(3DC).

The Three-Dimensional Chain takes decentralization and efficiency quite literally to a whole new dimension. 3DC adds multiple new features to the transaction processing, such as Signature Chains, Aggregation, Computational Sharing, Data Sharing, Multicast, Lower Level Library (LLL), Trust and Weight, Reputation Incentive Structures, and many many more.

With all these new features, Nexus is actively changing the cryptocurrency world by making these new concepts such as scalability and privacy more of requirements, rather than features.

To fully comprehend just the basics of how this technology is way more advanced compared to normal blockchain operations, we must first understand how Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies work in terms of the first dimension.

To put things more simple perspective, imagine Bitcoin and its’ transactions being a line of people waiting to get inside a bar, with how Bitcoin works, this line and its slowly working door guard can only process one person at the time.

However, in terms of Three dimensional Chain, the line of people is much more fluent and has many different concepts that can affect the flow of the people, instead just processing one person at the time, there can be multiple lines of people and a variety of changes that affect who can skip the line.

For example, if you are trustworthy, and a good friend with the door guard, he could simply just let you go first, and if you instead didn’t like to wait on the line, you could pay for the door guard and skip the line altogether.

Similarly, with the three-dimensional chain, a transaction with higher trust, and weight, will automatically be processed first because of the way the network prioritizes transactions.

The three-dimensional chain, by design, makes spamming the network almost impossible, because not only can’t you skip the line with lower trust and weight, if other nodes see you behaving badly, they will also see you as untrustworthy, and block you from entering altogether.

3DC not only reduces the miner centralization, but it also allows dynamic on-chain scaling, with all channels performing an equal amount of work.

Three Consensus Channels

Technically the tree consensus channels work as follows:

The Prime Channel – This is a proof of work mining channel that is focused on finding dense prime clusters using CPU, and It is by design resistant to ASIC mining.

The Hash Channel – This is the second proof of work mining channel and similar to many other coins algorithms, it uses GPUs and miners search for SHA-3 using the Skein algorithm.

The nPoS Channel – The third consensus channel uses it’s very own unique proof of stake method, where users can mint new Nexus coins by simply holding and unlocking the ones you already have inside the Nexus wallet.

Nexus Proof of Stake, has four define attributes that determine your return on investment:

Stake Rate – This attribute defines your annual percentage of reward, it starts at 0.5% and slowly increases towards a maximum of 3.0%.

This attribute defines your annual percentage of reward, it starts at 0.5% and slowly increases towards a maximum of 3.0%. Trust Weight – This indicates the amount of trust your node has build-up, it starts at 5% and reaches a maximum of 100%.

This indicates the amount of trust your node has build-up, it starts at 5% and reaches a maximum of 100%. Block Weight – This attribute resets each time you receive a stake. If no trust transaction is found after 72 hours, the stake rate begins to decay at a 3:1 ration. In other words, if it took three months to reach a certain percentage of the stake rate, it would take one month to decay back down to 0.5%. The minimum of +10k Nexus is required to maintain trust.

This attribute resets each time you receive a stake. If no trust transaction is found after 72 hours, the stake rate begins to decay at a 3:1 ration. In other words, if it took three months to reach a certain percentage of the stake rate, it would take one month to decay back down to 0.5%. The minimum of +10k Nexus is required to maintain trust. Stake Weight – This value is determined by the average of your trust, and block weight, the higher it is, the better chance you have to find a trust transaction.

Nexus compared with other platforms

Nexus is an amazing platform designed for real-world use, and it performs more as a verification authenticator, then a computation engine. That being said, here are some main reasons and key factors why the Nexus 7-layer software stack outperforms, other similar platforms such as Ethereum, EOS, and Waves.

What is the future of Nexus?

Nexus has built a completely new type of blockchain, the project is one of the most innovative in the space and has huge potential to revamp the whole way we currently think of cryptocurrencies and potentially internet as well.

It is also one of the few projects that actually care about the quantum resistance standard. That could potentially be a problem for a large majority of coins in the future.

If this becomes the case, then the Nexus blockchain might just be one of the most important projects still standing, securing networks after tens of years.

Below we have included the current Nexus TAO framework roadmap:

Additional Nexus Resources

How do I buy Nexus coins?

Nexus (NXS) can currently be bought on either VCC, Bittrex, or Binance with BTC. If you are new to Bitcoin, we recommend reading our What is Bitcoin? and Get Started with Bitcoin guides.

Note that this Nexus guide is very brief and is only focused on beginners.

Nexus is one of the most advanced blockchain projects around, and therefore it’s challenging to comprehend all its details, but to learn more check the official website, or links below.

Official Links

Useful Links