Advanced FAQ

What is Shardus?

Shardus is a project building the base software for a linearly scalable, truly decentralized, sharded ledger. This software can be used as a starting point for other public or private decentralized applications by adding a custom application layer. Decentralized application which are built using Shardus will be able to scale to accommodate more throughput as demand grows, by adding more nodes to the network. The first application to use Shardus is the Shardeum smart contract platform.

What is Shardeum?

The first application built using the Shardus software will be the Shardeum network. Shardeum is an EVM based, Ethereum compatible smart contract platform. Shardeum will have very fast transaction times, very low transaction fees, and sustainable rewards for validators. Shardeum holders can participate in the future direction of the network by voting on economic parameters like transaction fees, validator rewards and maintenance fund.

Is there a token for the Shardus project?

Yes, there is a token on the Ethereum network originally called Unblocked Ledger Token (ULT) and now re-branded to Shardus. The token is given in exchange for code development and other direct contributions. The token is not sold in a presale or an ICO.

How can I obtain tokens?

There are several ways. If you are a developer you should fill out the Join form and apply to join the development team to earn tokens that way. You can also buy or sell the tokens from a DEX; see the trading page.

Is the Shardus Project open source?

Yes, the software will be open source. However, during initial development the software will be in a private repo and developed by a core team. Once the project is completed, the source code will be made available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license with a license required for commercial use. For non-commercial use, it will be available under a Creative Commons BY license. Anyone interested in reviewing the code during development, may do so with a NDA which expires once the code is released.

Is there a license for using the Shardus software?

Public networks built using Shardus are asked to contribute at least 1% of the max network supply to the Shardus Token holders. This also helps the public project gain an initial community of users. For enterprise or private networks, a license is obtained by submitting Shardus Tokens to the smart contract to obtain a license token. The submitted Shardus Tokens are burned to benefit all Shardus Token holders.

Why is there no ICO?

Instead of selling our tokens for other tokens (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) and using that to pay the developers, we are directly giving our tokens as gratuity to developers for helping to create the Shardus software. We are also giving our tokens for completing bounties or providing other services to the project. This better aligns the incentives to ensure the project being successfully completed.

What is Proof-of-Quorum?

Proof-of-Quorum is a type of consensus algorithm which provides a provable receipt for every accepted transaction. It is more energy efficient than POW.

What is sharding?

A network of nodes is divided into groups called shards and different transactions are processed by different shards. This allows multiple transactions to be processed in parallel up to the number of shards.

What is state sharding?

The state data stored by the network is distributed among the shards so that each node in the network does not need to store the complete state. State sharding is essential for global scalability of networks and mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Why does Shardus not use a blockchain?

Grouping transactions into blocks has many inherent disadvantages. Processing each transaction individually provides the highest possible throughput and lowest latency. The disadvantages of blockchains include:

• Throughput limit. The transaction throughput rate becomes limited by the average time between blocks and the maximum allowed size of the block. Adding more computers to the network does not help to increase the throughput; rather it has the negative effect of increasing the network bandwidth consumed by each transaction.
• Node Bias. A single node (the one which produces the block) gets to decide which transactions will be in the block. That node can be biased and choose not to include some transactions or even create blocks with no transactions other than its own.
• Transaction order. The transactions in a block are not necessarily in the order in which they were received by the network. Also older transactions may still be pending while newer transactions are processed. Some applications such as exchanges or games, require transactions to be processed in the order they were received.

Where can I get answers to more questions?

You can email [email protected] or ask on our Discord server.