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XDC Network Spearheads Blockchain 4.0: Adding Accountability and Forensic Protocols

The next-generation decentralized consensus engine with a state-of-the-art forensic monitoring system enhances accountability and attributability. The forensic monitoring system has attracted strong attention from other blockchains including Facebook's Diem.

SINGAPORE / ACCESSWIRE / July 23, 2021 / The XDC network, a global open-source, enterprise-ready hybrid blockchain protocol, today announces the development of a new peer-reviewed consensus mechanism, XDPoS 2.0, aptly coined Blockchain 4.0. Where Blockchain 1.0 was base layer, 2.0 focused on smart contracts, 3.0 added scalability, 4.0 now adds a level of accountability to blockchains.

XDPoS 2.0 will see holistic "forensics" integrated into the existing Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) consensus protocol, creating a military-grade blockchain that will be faster, cheaper, and more secure than its predecessors. The novel tech has already seen interest from several prominent projects, including Facebook's Diem (as per a Diem improvement proposal).

Industry adoption of blockchain, particularly in trade finance, is occurring on a rapid scale. However, this shift is being stymied by the issues around accountability and attributability. XDPoS 2.0 integrates an efficient judiciary system designed to keep all verifying nodes accountable and allow for bad actors to be identified and effectively neutralized - as long as two-thirds of nodes are honest and still in operation. This provides a higher degree of trust than previous blockchain consensus mechanisms, which offer no means to identify attackers.

XDC Network's blockchain 4.0 harnesses the popular HotStuff consensus mechanism (the protocol underlying Facebook's Diem and DapperLabs's Flow projects). HotStuff guarantees to provide consensus even when a fraction of participant nodes act maliciously (so-called Byzantine behavior). HotStuff also introduces 'finality,' meaning that the network cannot be rolled back after transactions are confirmed.

However, the issue remains that Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) systems, such as Hotstuff, cannot tolerate a faulty node of greater than ⅓ of the entire system - leaving a small but viable attack vector. XDPoS 2.0 overcomes this by coupling the HotStuff protocol with the XDC Network's unique 'forensic capabilities' - a measure that identifies and punishes malicious nodes with cryptographic integrity. In the low probability event that more than ⅓ of the system displays a Byzantine fault, afflicted nodes would get shut down before they are able to cause any network instability, allowing the system to operate as it should.

The novel blockchain feature incorporates the latest peer-reviewed academic research, equipping the decentralized ledger with strong security and performance guarantees. The underlying research was conducted by several notable academics, including Pramod Viswanath, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (and is scheduled to appear at ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security in South Korea November 2021, a premier security conference).

"Despite the maturity of Byzantine fault tolerance protocols, little research exists on what happens after a security breach, especially in terms of identifying the malicious actors. The general intuition was that if there is a security breach, there must have been some overt malicious behavior (e.g., double voting), and thus it is straightforward to identify the malicious actors. We found that this is simply not true: subtle, covert attacks are enabled by seemingly small variants of the protocols, but not all," said Prof. Viswanath.

"Our paper identifies forensic capabilities of the most popular BFT protocols and the most promising variants and is the basis of building a systematic approach to accountability and attributability in blockchains," he added.

Once these new forensic tools have been enabled, the XDC Network will be able to meet the unique needs of enterprises in a way that most blockchains simply can't. A new layer of systemic accountability, on top of a scalable, robust framework, truly opens the door to further enterprise participation-particularly when it comes to trade finance and the developing decentralized finance (DeFi) sectors. Creating a robust blockchain ecosystem with judicial checks and balances will create more opportunities to generate yield through tokenization, enhance visibility for lenders and borrowers in trade finance, and allow smaller enterprises to source competitive rates for project funding.

Innovation is the key to the future of fintech as well as blockchain. With solutions like the upgraded XDPoS 2.0, there are fewer obstacles than ever to bring decentralized technology to the masses.

For more information, please contact:

Leo Park
PR Contact for XDC Network
leo@cryptolandpr.com

Billy Sebell
Head of Ecosystem Development for XinFin North America
billy@xinfin.org

About the XDC Network

The XDC Network - created by eXchange inFinite (XinFin) - is a delegated proof of stake consensus network (XDPoS), enabling hybrid relay bridges, instant block finality, and interoperability with ISO 20022 financial messaging standards, making XinFin's Hybrid Architecture developer-friendly. XinFin Digital Contract (XDC) is the digital asset that powers the The XDC hybrid blockchain network. The XDC token acts as a settlement mechanism for decentralized applications (dApps) built on The XDC Network. For more information, please visit: https://xinfin.org/.

SOURCE: The XDC Network



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https://www.accesswire.com/656849/XDC-Network-Spearheads-Blockchain-40-Adding-Accountability-and-Forensic-Protocols

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