Let’s get to the core of CoreDAO! 💪🏼

What is CoreDAO’s mission?

With an acclaimed 4.3M (yes, million!!) transactions, 1.7M addresses, 1.6M on Twitter, and 210K on Discord and growing - CoreDAO’s mission is to build an inclusive and strong community in web3 that aims to resolve the blockchain trilemma. The blockchain trilemma is essentially the most-talked-about issue with the core values of web3 as it essentially states that a blockchain network (any blockchain network), cannot achieve all 3 - scalability, decentralization, and security. The trilemma is that even if a blockchain can achieve any 2 of the 3, i.e., for instance, decentralization and security - it would fail to achieve the 3rd, i.e., scalability. 😓

Source: CoreDAO’s White Paper

As can be seen from this image, no blockchain ecosystem has been successful in resolving the blockchain trilemma. Traditional chains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc., are often decentralized and secure but they have failed at being scalable. On the other hand, typical high TPS chains are often scalable and secure but miss out on true decentralization! Lastly, multi-chain ecosystems (a rising ecosystem) wherein aim to get the best out of all chains - while, being scalable and decentralized for sure, are unable to achieve security. So, who’s going to resolve the blockchain trilemma?

You guessed it right! CoreDAO to the rescue. 🚀

Deets from the all-knowing whitepaper!

Resolving the Blockchain Trilemma

CoreDAO aims to solve the blockchain trilemma by developing the Satoshi Plus consensus which would accordingly operate at the very “core” of the blockchain network. What’s the Satoshi Plus consensus though? First, let’s focus on the word ‘consensus’ - blockchain networks run on consensus mechanisms like Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of History, and so on and so forth. We will not delve into explaining each of these consensus mechanisms but rest assured that a simple Google (or should we say ChatGPT?) will get you elaborate explanations for each of these consensus mechanisms!

Now that we understand the term ‘consensus’ from the larger term ‘Satoshi Plus consensus’, let’s dive into what the true meaning of this is. Satoshi Plus consensus, as defined by the CoreDAO white paper itself, aims to combine 2 well-known consensus mechanisms - Proof of Work, and Delegated Proof of Stake in order to resolve the blockchain trilemma. The foundational idea is to leverage the strengths of each of the consensus mechanisms while simultaneously minimizing or eliminating their respective weaknesses. What would this look like?

Well, Bitcoin’s computing power is one that always aimed to guarantee decentralization, and over the past few years - it has managed to do just that. CoreDAO figured that since one of the prongs of the blockchain trilemma is resolved by adopting Bitcoin’s computing power - that’s the first step! The second step involves figuring out the issues around scalability by integrating a Delegated Proof of Stake consensus mechanism in addition to leadership election mechanisms. A leadership election mechanism is one where one thing in a distributed system is given special powers. What’s the third and last step to resolving the blockchain trilemma? Guaranteeing security! Security is the key, quite literally, and CoreDAO aims to ensure this through this holistic combined effort. 🗝

Source: CoreDAO’s White Paper

Who does what to achieve this? 

There are different actors throughout this process that facilitate CoreDAO in reaching its resolution of the trilemma. This includes validators, relayers, BTC Miners, CORE Holders, and Verifiers. 

The validators are tasked with producing blocks and (the unguessable) validating transactions on CoreDAO’s blockchain network, or otherwise known as the Core Network. How do you become a validator? Anyone can become a validator at Core by simply registering with the Core Network, and locking up the requisite refundable CORE currency deposit. 🔒

The relayers, on the other hand, are responsible for relaying BTC block headers to the Core network. This works in conjunction with BTC Miners who are responsible for securing the Bitcoin network through the Proof of Work consensus mechanism. The Delegated Proof of Stake mechanism that Core Network chooses to integrate as well, is the perfect solution because delegation is a non-destructive act. This essentially means that by delegating on the Core network, the BTC Miners are simply repurposing their existing work versus actually choosing between securing the Core network and securing Bitcoin. 🤝🏼

Furthermore, CORE Holders can actually participate in the staking by effectively delegating their holdings to a validator. CORE Holders are those that hold the CORE currency which is the base currency of the CORE chain. Lastly, verifiers are those that ensure the security of the CORE network as they are tasked with reporting any malicious behavior on the network. While anyone can conduct themselves as a verifier in the CORE Network, the verification process within the CORE ecosystem is actually quite effective as successful verification flags may actually result in either rewarding or staking the verifier, and it may also result in jailing misbehaving validators. 👮🏼‍♂️

Ensuring Security - the 🗝️to a successful blockchain network!

The CORE ecosystem has largely identified 2 categories of attacks that take place on blockchain networks - (i) network attacks, and (ii) consensus attacks. 👇🏼

The former, i.e., network attacks are such that these are attacks directly to the blockchain network itself. The CORE network aims to mitigate network attacks such as Eclipse, BGP Hijack, etc., by deploying a combination of transaction filtering, random node selection for P2P comms, geographic dispersion of nodes, and an officially published, openly available, seed list for public nodes. ✔️

Consensus attacks, on the other hand, are direct attacks on the consensus mechanisms. These attacks specifically have a wider taxonomy of threat vectors and the primary way that the CORE Network has chosen to battle this, has been through its combination of the Proof of Work, Delegated Proof of Stake, and the validator election mechanism. 💭

Progressive Decentralization: The Reality! 💯

While most DAOs or web3 companies have leaped into decentralization, CoreDAO did the saner thing in realizing that decentralization is a process and hence will take time. The CORE ecosystem as a whole, adopted a progressive decentralization system wherein the focus of decentralization is not solely limited to the consensus level. Instead, it aims to expand into governance over time. For instance, when the DAO is just starting off - there would certainly be a level of centralization that is simply necessary to give the marketing push and the governance push that the DAO requires. This would help get the CORE chain off the ground and also facilitate establishing a product-market fit. 🚀

However, over time, as the CORE network as well as the CORE community expands and grows, the DAO will increasingly lean on community participation. The eventual goal - as is of any DAO - is that the broader CORE community takes control of all the governance functions and operations of the DAO, including treasury management. 💸

CoreDAO’s latest development: an airdrop 💰

On February 8th, 2023, the CORE network, after longgg anticipation finally announced the airdrop of its base currency CORE. With 1M+ views on Twitter, the announcement tweet about the airdrop went close to viral!! You can access the Tweet here. This airdrop has been very successful in showing the world how effective the Satoshi Plus consensus can be, in action. Throughout 4.3M transactions, the CORE network seems to have been incredibly stable and congested free thereby proving its point. 

References

CoreDAO’s White Paper