GoChain aims to go beyond Ethereum smart contacts with the use of Proof of Reputation (PoR) instead of Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Authority (PoA).
The potential uses of cryptocurrency and smart contracts via the blockchain are revolutionary and have the potential to disrupt almost every industry and institution imaginable. But, there are problems in making this vision a reality. The largest and most immediate problems are blockchain in its current form is not scalable, lacks real decentralization, and is using absurd amounts of energy that is not sustainable.
GoChain, a standalone blockchain, is a next generation smart contract platform. It’s built upon an improved Ethereum codebase that solves the scaling problem with immediacy. They currently have a working TestNet showing in excess of 1300 transactions per second ongoing with stability and has been running as high as 2400 transactions per second.
There is much to be optimistic about GoChain (GO). Since it aims to considerably improve on Ethereum, it has been able to scale to one hundred times the number that Ethereum is capable of handling. By the end of 2019, it promises to be 1000 times faster than Ethereum. The bottom line is it is a good project that holds promise of becoming a great project.
A checkpoint is a signed snapshot of the current state of the entire blockchain at a particular block number. It will contain all non-zero account balances and smart contract states. Once a checkpoint is generated, all the previous blocks and data can be removed. When a new node is started, it will download a recent checkpoint, then continue retrieving blocks and state from that point on. This will save hours, if not days, getting in sync. This means a node can be up and running in minutes. GoChain will provide a publicly-available, read-only API to retrieve any historical block so anyone can look up data by keys. This will be open-source so anyone can run this to keep a full history. We encourage it for further verification and accountability. This will make it easier to build third-party services such as block explorers.
GoChain has implemented a two-phase voting process. For the initial rollout, the GoChain Foundation will add the first 50 signers to the authorization list. These original 50 signers will be companies from multiple industries and spread out across multiple countries. This will help ensure forced decentralization and avoid interference by any single government. Once 50 authorized signers have been established then voting control will be handed over to the signers to govern themselves. This voting process is shown in Algorithm 2. The PoA implementation repurposes several block headers to pass voting information between nodes.
Authorized signers will be rewarded GoChain Coins (GOC) per block signed. Initially this rate will be 5% of the total tokens which is 50,000,000 new tokens in year one. This rate will decrease over time. The amount per block will depend on the finalized block times. If block times are 10 seconds for example, then the node would be rewarded an average of 15.9 tokens per signed block in the first year. There will also be small transaction fees that the authoritative node that signs the block containing the transactions will keep.The consensus protocol ensures fairness and liveness by incentivizing the assigned signer of a block to perform the signing but also allowing other blocks to sign if the assigned signer is unavailable. The assigned signer for a block is determined by a round-robin lookup of the authorized signer list. If the assigned signer doesn’t respond then then other signers can sign at a lower block difficulty level.
Authorized signers are trusted nodes that create blocks, sign them, and distribute them to other nodes. Similar to miners in a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system in that they create blocks and sign them but without the mining cost. A list of authorized signers will be maintained on the blockchain. Only authorized nodes can sign blocks and all blocks are verified that this is true by checking the signer is in the authorized list. The signing algorithm is essentially the same signature algorithm as PoW but with a different set of headers. PoW-specific headers will be removed and additional headers added to enable voting.
GoChain uses a Proof of Reputation (PoR) consensus model that depends on the reputation of its participants to keep the network secure. A participant must have a reputation that is important enough that they would face dire consequences if they were to cheat the system–in both financial terms and branding. Most businesses would face serious consequences if they were caught cheating a financial network. Larger companies with more to lose will be chosen over smaller companies with less to lose. Once a company proves reputation, they may be voted into the network as an authoritative node and at this point, it operates just like a Proof of Authority network (PoA). Only authoritative nodes can sign and validate blocks.
Sadly, there aren't any options for buying GoChain directly with credit card or a direct bank transfer, not any that we'd trust anyway. We'd recommend you go the standard route, which is buying BTC through Coinbase and then exchanging it for GO on either Bittrex or Binance.
Binance
Binanace is the leading crypto to crypto exchange around with over 100 coins supported for deposit and withdrawal.
The exchange accepts users from around the world and has received favorable reviews from the crypto community. Recently the exchange has also partnered with Simplex to allow credit card purchases of cryptocurrencies at a premium.
A flat rate of 0.1% is very lucrative fee for any trader who doesn’t need immediate fiat liquidation. Incredibly, it undercuts most other large exchanges, some of which charge upward of 0.2%. That’s a pretty sizeable difference if you’re working with large orders.
Bittrex
Bittrex is a US based exchange founded in 2013 and headquartered in Seattle Washington. The company was founded by Bill Shihara, Richie Lai and Rami Kawach, all three previously worked at Microsoft.
A 0.25% flat commission is applied to all trades. Trading fees are slightly higher on Bittrex compared to the industry average. Additionally, there are neither rebates for higher-volume trades nor incentive models for takers and makers.
Fortunately, Ledger support is available for GoChain.
Ledger
The Ledger company offers multiple devices for hardware storage, and you won't go wrong with any of them. The security that Ledger's hardware wallets offer is priceless and is definitely worth investing in if you're storing an excessive amount of currencies. As for using the Nano Ledger S, the first step towards setting up your device is unboxing and checking if you have received all the accessories coming with it. Once you have unboxed your device, you need to configure it and initialize it before being able to use it. The process is quite simple and will hardly take about 20-30 minutes post which you will be set to use your Ledger Nano S device.
Setup guide video: here
Trust Wallet
Trust Wallet is one of the most trustworthy wallets amongst the users, especially since the largest exchange in the world, Binance had acquired it last year in June. Trust wallet is even very updated and advanced with the latest technologies, which makes it effective for all kinds of users. Trust has fulfilled its aim by adding the latest BNB mainnet version, which it is compatible with. So, the users can store their BNB mainnet coins in Trust wallet, without having to worry about the security.
Gochain Wallet
Gochain offers a simple to use online wallet, available here. The wallet is simple to use. Just click "Create Account" and save the generated private key at a place of your convenience. Then simply click "Use Wallet" and log in to your wallet with the private key that was generated for you.
