I. TRONZ Privacy Protocol Upgrade
The launch of the TRONZ privacy protocol is bound to revolutionize the future of blockchain. Its core, “zk-SNARKs,” is an essential branch of cryptography that allows provers to convince verifiers about the validity of an argument without disclosing any confidential information. The eight significant advantages of TRONZ privacy protocol are:
1. Diverse transaction types and a high level of privacy — TRONZ Privacy protocol supports three types of TRC20 shielded transactions: Mint, Transfer, and Burn, all of which correspond to three zero-knowledge proof instructions (TIP-137) respectively: verifyMintProof, verifyTransferProof and verifyBurnProof.
Mint can convert a public TRC20 token into a shielded one, while verifyMintProof verifies the validity of such conversions. Transfer is used in TRC20 shielded transactions to hide the transaction amount and addresses of the sender and recipient, while verifyTransferProof ensures the validity of transfers. Burn converts a shielded TRC20 token into a public one, while verifyBurnProof verifies the validity of such conversion. Zero-knowledge proof generates by calling the related APIs of a TRON Full Node.
2. Compatible with tokens for shielded transactions — TRC20 shielded transactions support all TRC20 standard tokens, whether they are or yet to be in circulation. In consideration of TRON’s unyielding commitment to building a safe and globally-compliant public chain, TRX will not in any way be made anonymous. This privacy protocol only covers TRC20 tokens. As one of the many advanced features on TRON, TRC20 tokens can be used by simply running the smart contracts.
3. More efficient underlying smart contracts — TRONZ privacy protocol is implemented by Java and Rust, which speeds up the verification process. In parallel, the Solidity code for Private contracts is so succinct that it takes only one instruction to verify zero-knowledge proof and update the Merkle tree. The protocol also defines the standard for TRC20 shielded transactions, which can be used by any developer to implement a TRC20 shielded transaction of any standard without a deep understanding of zero-knowledge proof.
4. Highly affordable transaction fees on shielded transactions — Completing a shielded transaction in the TRON network costs as low as 1.5 TRX ($0.024, quoted on June 3rd, 2020). On average, the transaction fee is only around 3 TRX ($0.049, quoted on June 3rd, 2020). In contrast, the average cost of an Ethereum shielded transaction is $1.72, and its highest fee on record exceeds $42. In other words, to make a shielded transaction, Ethereum is 3.5 times more expensive than TRON on average and 575 times pricier at its peak.
5. Support transfers of any amount — Unlike Ethereum’s Tornado Cash, which only allows transfers in a fixed amount, TRONZ Smart Contract Privacy Protocol is much more flexible as users can transfer any amount of tokens, thus freeing them from repetitive operations and multiple transaction fees.
6. Well-rounded shielded account mechanism — To query a transaction and to make a transaction will require different permissions. In addition, querying transactions on the sender side and the recipient side will request different private keys. A private key can also be used for multiple private addresses, providing maximum privacy protection.
7. Verifiable — Both the sender and the recipient of TRONZ privacy protocol can send their private query keys to third-party agencies to verify transactions. That way, you won’t have to worry about losing any unspent transactions.
8. Out-of-band transmission — All information about shielded transactions within the TRONZ Smart Contract Privacy Protocol are stored on-chain in the form of encrypted texts. Recipients just need to scan the transaction in the block and unlock their recipient information with the private key; senders would not need to give additional information through extra channels. Meanwhile, senders can send notes no longer than 512 bytes to recipients.
Built with the Groth 16 scheme, zk-SNARK, the ideal solution for TRONZ Smart Contract Privacy Protocol, requires Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to generate the initial credible parameters. In January, TRONZ Foundation held its first non-profit MPC Torch Project, which had a total of 196 crypto community members from various countries and industries participate. Participants outnumbered those of the Zcash MPC Project, which made it the world’s largest MPC Project while providing the initial credible parameters for privacy protocol. For transparency, all results will be open-sourced. Furthermore, we will continue to take measures in developing privacy protocols for blockchain growth. As the MPC is about to come to a close, TRONZ Smart Contract Privacy Protocol has chosen the hash of the 632800th bitcoin block as a seed to generate the random beacon, so that the last participant will not be able to launch a security attack by picking up a specific parameter.
II. The New TPOS Dual-layer Consensus Mechanism
The DPoS consensus mechanism currently adopted by TRONZ ensures high TPS, while the PBFT consensus mechanism enables fast block confirmation. The two combined will deliver high TPS and cut the time for block confirmation from 57 seconds to 3 seconds while maintaining a more consistent blockchain. Besides, the new consensus mechanism guarantees the security of the cross-chain protocol by using SPV to verify whether the cross-chain transactions are on-chain. The key to implement SPV is to know the SRs (Super Representatives) who are producing blocks during the maintenance period and if the current blocks are confirmed without actually executing the transaction. The solution to the above mentioned lies precisely in with the new consensus mechanism.
III. New TICP Cross-Chain Protocol
Any two blockchains which have implemented TICP protocol can establish cross-chain communication; this refers to the data transactions between two independent blockchain ledgers. As an essential stage in blockchain development, cross-chain occurs in the form of asset exchange and transfer between different blockchains. Due to limited resources, the TRON network has introduced a limit to the number of chains allowed to connect to the TRON public chain. To uphold a healthy cross-chain environment, we will punish anyone who conducts malicious acts during cross-chain operations. On top of that, TRON will introduce cross-chain staking and incentive mechanisms to draw more quality projects into the TRON cross-chain ecosystem.
IV. A Financial Institution and Enterprise Blockchain Solution
We designed the financial institution and enterprise blockchain solutions to power custom development for business clients. We’ve successfully developed a financial institution and enterprise blockchain solution. Financial institutions and business developers will be able to swiftly deploy a customized application blockchain based on their needs. These solutions will significantly reduce the time and cost of projects, as well as allowing for easy adoption of a new blockchain system. Currently, core function modules of the TRON development framework includes (but not limited to): the consensus mechanism, P2P network, blockchain database, cross-chain, virtual machine, transaction, and encryption. Each module can be compiled and replaced without affecting any other modules. Financial Institutions and Enterprise Blockchain Solutions provides graphical deployment tools and supports cross-chain operations, granularity configuration, and bulk-deployment of nodes, making it easier for enterprises to integrate their customized application blockchains into the TRON ecosystem and in turn, add more users cases available in TRON to their blockchains.
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