Since it has been rather quiet around the Trustlines Network lately, we would like to take the opportunity and share some insight into what has been going on the last few months.
In this update, we will walk you through a few recent changes, tell you about the new organizational setup, the plans to scale via a dedicated Trustlines Blockchain and show you how you can get involved.
The creation of the Trustlines Foundation
Organizationally, the biggest input for the new setup was the creation of a non-profit entity called the Trustlines Foundation. We truly believe that a non-profit foundation is the best way to foster the Trustlines Network vision and to maintain independence and support the cause without monetary incentive. The Foundation intends on ensuring open and free access to the protocol while preventing monopolistic rent-seeking.
The Trustlines Foundation will support research, development, deployment, governance and adoption of the Trustlines Protocol, with a focus on acting in a supporting role within the Trustlines Network enabling different decentralized p2p use cases based on networks of mutual-trust. It will not necessarily operate any of the underlying infrastructure of the protocol.
You can find out more about the Trustlines Foundation on our website.
The transition and new setup
With the creation of the Trustlines Foundation, the relevant code has found a new home within the Trustlines Protocol Github. Furthermore, new communication channels (Website, Blog, Twitter, Gitter) have been established and the old channels consequently have been shut down.
The Trustlines Foundation encourages the community to work on all components of the Trustlines Network and will facilitate the creation of the necessary platforms so that parties within this ecosystem can align and exchange with each other. People, projects and companies will not only be encouraged to work on the codebase, but we will also have the opportunity to use the Trustlines Network trademarks (imagine this like a “powered by Trustlines Protocol”). We hope that this will create a setup from which all involved parties will have a positive gain.
The plan to scale via a dedicated Trustlines Blockchain
Initially, the Trustlines Network was conceived as a dApp on the Ethereum main chain. Unfortunately, the transaction cost and transaction capacity limitations of the Ethereum main chain would render some of the envisioned use cases impractical. Therefore, after defining the requirements and considering the options, an Ethereum sidechain is currently viewed as the best way forward.
The planned Trustlines Blockchain will be a minimal viable Proof-of-Stake (mPoS) Ethereum sidechain, based on Parity’s Aura consensus algorithm. It will introduce staking and slashing mechanisms to combat equivocation risk, have anonymous validators and make use of hard-forking as a powerful defense of last resort. Importantly, the blockchain shall be governed in such a way that it’s limited to hosting use cases that are within the scope of the overall Trustlines Network vision as envisioned by the Foundation using feedback from the community.
We will publish a separate, more detailed blog post about the Trustlines Blockchain in the coming days.
How can you get involved?
Getting involved is very easy. All Trustlines Network related code is open source and available on GitHub. Feel free to review any component and suggest changes and join us in creating better code! You can also contact us or the ecosystem in general via the social media channels.
We want to see the Trustlines Network community growing and therefore are happy for suggestions on how we can help you to spread the Trustlines vision!
We are excited to go on this journey with you and looking forward to starting a conversation with fellow Trustlines contributors at EthCC in Paris next week.
The Trustlines Foundation
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