We are proud to announce the release of the Koinos Unified Whitepaper! This whitepaper explains how proof-of-burn, Mana, and the infinitely upgradeable Koinos blockchain framework combine to create the most accessible L1 ever!
Read the whitepaper / Download the pdf
Our Story
After leaving Steemit, our goal was to build a company that would empower developers to build dApps like Steem and Hive, but on a truly decentralized and fee-less blockchain. However, when we analyzed the different blockchains available, we found that none had the properties we needed. The “fee-less” blockchains were not truly fee-less, requiring that users pay for RAM and/or accounts. They were also not truly decentralized as a result of their launch (ICOs) or their consensus algorithm, and often both.
Ultimately, we didn’t just want to support the kind of fee-less dApps that already existed, we wanted to take blockchain accessibility to the extreme by enabling, for the first time ever, free-to-use dApps which would require not only fee-less transactions, but free accounts, free smart contract execution, and network resource delegation. Delivering these capabilities required building an entirely new blockchain from the ground up.
Read the whitepaper / Download the pdf
Previous Whitepapers
We started by releasing the whitepaper for the Koinos blockchain framework; the first blockchain capable of evolution. The Koinos framework would serve as the evolving “backbone” at the heart of mainnet that would enable it to improve at a more rapid rate than any other blockchain out there. This same property enabled testnet to evolve, and as it did we released more whitepapers to describe how it was getting more advanced. Those whitepapers (framework, mana, proof-of-burn) addressed each component as if they were in a vacuum, but their entire purpose is to power the most accessible blockchain ever: Koinos mainnet.
This whitepaper doesn’t just unify all of those previous whitepapers, it describes how they all work together to create a general purpose blockchain that is more than just another Ethereum competitor; it’s the first genuine alternative to Ethereum. While everyone else is trying to offer something just like Ethereum but with slightly lower fees or slightly faster, Koinos delivers something that’s more than fee-less; it’s free-to-use, efficient and truly decentralized.
Read the whitepaper / Download the pdf
Community Contributors
We want to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of community members who have helped to make Koinos already more decentralized than most probably realize. In addition to creating the Kondor web wallet, and providing valuable feedback throughout the development of Koinos, Julian Gonzalez also provided insightful feedback to the unified the whitepaper being released today. Support Julian on GitHub!
After reading our original proof-of-burn whitepaper, Luke Willis suggested the idea of eliminating the NFT miners and instead using the fungible tokens to quantify how much virtual hash power a user had acquired through token burns; the design featured in this whitepaper. Subscribe to Luke’s fantastic podcast and sign up for his insightful newsletter!
Of course, no community acknowledgement would be complete without mentioning Roamin who developed the AssemblyScript SDK which doesn’t just make free smart contract development accessible to JavaScript and TypeScript developers, it is now being used by Koinos Group to implement system contracts like the governance contract and proof-of-burn. Because these contracts are so heavily used by the blockchain, the much smaller size of the files generated by the AssemblyScript SDK dramatically increases the performance of the blockchain. Support Roamin on GitHub!
Koinos has already evolved into something that far exceeds our original expectations. We hope this whitepaper captures why we are so excited to complete mainnet development and see Koinos come to life. We hope you enjoy reading it!
