Development Update 8
--
The primary focus of the last few weeks has been putting together document drafts as well as testing various approaches to see what can be best used to solve Novusphere’s problems going forward. Three important things to highlight are the topics of transitioning to Novusphere from the current temporary blockchain, the arbitration and bounties system and the consensus mechanism of Novusphere although there are other available documents on the resource/faq page of novusphere.io.
Transitioning
The draft document related to transitioning to Novusphere from the temporary blockchain can be found here.
Briefly summarizing, there are two key things to highlight. Balances from the temporary blockchain will directly correlate to the balances once the mainnet of Novusphere is launched. This will be a seamless process and requires the end user / balance holder to do nothing in preparation for when this event should occur other than ensure they have their private keys. Nearing the date of this launch, we will seek to work with exchanges that list atmos to freeze markets so users are required to withdraw their coins so they are in control of their private keys.
Proof of stake relies on balances being well distributed. Atmos currently is not well distributed and as such we need to come up with an mechanism which helps to facilitate better distribution while still giving users their proportional balance fairly. Such a mechanism is described in the transitioning document, however alternate proposals are welcome!
Arbitration & Bounties (Content Requesting)
The draft document related to arbitration & bounties can be found here.
Briefly summarizing, the system allows users to request tasks of participants within the Novusphere community priced in atmos. The tasks do not particularly have to be related to Novusphere but could be such as requesting certain content be added to the blockchain.
Should there be a dispute where someone who has completed a task feels cheated (i.e. someone else was chosen instead of them or nobody was chosen at all) they can appeal the task to be reviewed. Reviews are handled by a group of elected arbiters similar to a jury system. The arbiters if requested to intervene have the final say and can override the recipient chosen by the requester.
Consensus
The draft document related to consensus can be found here.
Briefly summarizing, the system is heavily based on the concept of delegated proof of stake as used in the existing platforms Bitshares and Steem. The main reason being the advantage of the set up of how validation works. State updates can quickly occur giving the blockchain a high throughput capacity. This is extremely important as Novusphere is not only a ledger of balances but also arbitrary metadata that is loosely structured.
Community Involvement
This week, voting will be enabled for draft documents to gauge the communities support for or against them. In the end, it will be up to the holders of atmos to decide the future of Novusphere as a community.
Since not everyone has a technical background, there is a lot to discuss and clarification may be needed on existing proposals. To address this, a community meeting is scheduled to happen on Saturday, November 4th, 9AM PST (4PM UTC). After reading the 3 documents presented above, consider pros and cons to be discussed at this meeting. The objective is that if there are any inherent concerns or issues amendments can be made to the drafts to resolve them. It may be required that if large changes are made or other proposals are added that several other meetings are scheduled to occur.
Voting on the drafts will conclude December 16th and a final overview of Novusphere will be created for expectations and reference going forward. Until this time alternate proposals that conflict with existing ones can be put forward by the community. It is expected that in Q1 2018 a testnet will be launched publicly to begin large scale testing of Novusphere. There is currently no set time estimate for a mainnet launch as this is highly dependent on the results of the testnet.
