Bystack — Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) Platform

Bystack — Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) Platform

With the mission of bridging the atom assets and byte assets, Bytom aims to create diverse assets and a programmable economy, in order to leverage blockchain technology and solve existing problems in the real world. Recently, Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) platform Bystack was introduced which serves to help enterprises establish and manage blockchain networks easily for commercial applications.

The unique mainchain-sidechain BUTXO model platform Bystack is created by optimizing the consensus algorithm, smart contract, scalability, privacy and cross-chain interoperability of current Bytom blockchain. Customers can use Bystack to deploy and manage a blockchain network for different business scenarios with low costs and high efficiency. Bystack is a safe, scalable and user-friendly one-stop solution for developers and enterprises.

The mainchain is responsible for issuing and destroying assets with decentralization and security. The sidechains are responsible for running large-scale commercial applications, and the sidechains sacrifice part of the decentralization to greatly improve performance. An unlimited number of sidechains could co-exist to meet different commercial application needs.

The unique mainchain-sidechain BUTXO model, flexible and innovative consensus algorithm, enhanced security and privacy protection make Bystack applicable to various scenarios, such as Royalty Redemption, Copyright Confirmation, Product Traceability, Supply-chain Finance, Digital Government, Decentralized Trading, Distributed Identity System, Blockchain Games, Company Equity Management and so on. Currently, several projects about Royalty Redemption, Blockchain Contracts and Digital Government are under test on Bystack and will be used in a large scale before long.

Breaking the dilemma of blockchain impossible triangle

Many people agree that the blockchain system is now facing an impossible triangle: decentralization, security and scalability/high performance. If security is indispensable for all Baas platforms, then it’s a binary paradox between decentralization and high performance.

In light of the stacking experience of the Internet TCP/IP protocol, a layered model may solve the blockchain binary paradox while building a complete commercial application architecture. Bystack breaks the dilemma and achieves both decentralization and scalability via a structure combining one mainchain and multiple sidechains. In Bystack, the mainchain Bytom blockchain is connected to the sidechain Vapor through a communication protocol called Federation, which is a cross-chain solution in essence. This solution realizes the transfer of digital assets across chains.

As the Layer 1 and the mainchain in Bystack, Bytom blockchain provides a permissionless environment that guarantees decentralization. Assets’ issuance, transmission and destruction are all initiated on the mainchain and then pegged into sidechains through Federation protocol. At the same time, digital fingerprint of all assets could be stored and certified on the mainchain. The PoW consensus algorithm of this blockchain ensures transaction security and data immutability.

The sidechain and Layer 2 of Bystack adopts BFT consensus algorithm to improve efficiency of transactions and the TPS of sidechain can be as high as 100,000. The combination of a mainchain and sidechains brings both the decentralization of a public chain and the high performance of private chains or consortium chains. Bystack ‘s mainchain needs to be secure and stable, so performance, scalability and more innovative attempts will be implemented on sidechains.

Meanwhile, a unique consensus algorithm based on DPoS+BBFT for sidechains in Bystack is also created. The community first vote for nodes utilizing DPoS and then selected nodes reach a consensus utilizing BBFT. It takes only 0.5 second to generate a new block. BBFT is derived from Byzantine fault tolerant (PBFT) consensus and allows less than one third nodes to misbehave. BBFT reaches a balance between network communication complexity and transaction completeness. The combination of DPoS and BBFT significantly improves the efficiency of sidechains.

In addition, enterprise or individual can use existing sidechain, or can generate their own sidechain and build their own application on the sidechain. Assets on mainchain is pegged to sidechain through Federation and then circulated within the sidechain. The sidechain supports pluggable consensus, database plugins, which can be better matched to meet actual business needs.

High performance is important but security and privacy also matter

Bystack deploys mainchain-sidechain isolation as well as sidechain-sidechain isolation. If one sidechain is attacked or affected, it will not affect the operation of mainchain and other sidechains, which enhances the entire network’s stability. In Federation protocol, through peg-in and peg-out between mainchain and sidechains, collectors, validators and other roles ensure that the asset transfer process is divided into multiple processes to prevent single validator from misbehaving.

Bystack Layer 2 uses the DPoS+BBFT consensus algorithm to provide high-availability Byzantine fault tolerance. Automatic recovery of consensus state, mutual recovery of blockchain data, automatic equalization of data storage, and automatic routing of node services, guarantee the security and stability of the network itself.

BUTXO model adopted by the mainchain is also an innovation on security and privacy. BUTXO improves the Bitcoin UTXO model and support multiple asset transactions. Each BUTXO is locked by an independent contract. Hacking a single contract can only get access to the assets locked by that contract, and other assets are not affected, thus protecting the assets on the mainchain. Due to the statelessness of BUTXO , the anonymity of users is enhanced to some extent.

Bystack offers a full range of privacy protection of transaction and contract with a combination of encryption algorithms. For example, for multi-sign transactions, the Schnorr signature and the MuSig algorithm are used to verify multiple signatures. Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP ) is used to encrypt the amount of transaction. MimbleWimble can be used to encrypt both the transaction address and the transaction amount. High configurability of Bystack ensures flexibility and makes it adapt to different user scenarios.

Bystack — Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) Platform was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.