Why GoChain?

GoChain is a blockchain-first company, everything blockchain is our life blood and this is the company’s complete and total focus. We’re uniquely the world’s only full-service blockchain consultancy, architecture and professional development company that also runs a public, decentralized, enterprise-secured blockchain network. Many blockchain companies focus on advising, consulting and development OR they’ve built a blockchain protocol. GoChain bridges the gap by building the world’s fastest web3 blockchain for public, private and hybrid deployments, while also advising and building enterprise applications for the world’s largest companies, NGOs and institutions.

We believe in driving the adoption of impactful technology for the betterment of society and our habitat. GoChain partners with companies in all industries to quickly launch and manage their own scalable, low-cost blockchain solutions, run distributed applications and to deploy smart contracts. At 1,300 transactions per second, GoChain’s network is the fastest, most reliable, web3 based public and private blockchain protocol. GoChain’s Proof of Reputation (PoR) consensus algorithm relies on a decentralized consortium of Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and nonprofits to validate transactions. GoChain also supports its designated public cryptocurrency, which has the ticker symbol GO.

GoChain, a standalone blockchain, is a next generation smart contract platform. It’s built upon an improved Ethereum codebase that solves the scaling problem with immediacy. Right now Ethereum can only process 13 transactions per second and as such their network is at capacity, yet it’s the industry standard. There are other players coming into the space trying to build new blockchains to solve this scalability issue but that won’t solve the Ethereum scaling problem. Our public network has shown in excess of 1300 transactions per second ongoing with stability and has been running as high as 2400 transactions per second.

Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, has labeled scalability a trilema where all 3 problems need to be solved simultaneously:

1. Scalability
2. Decentralization
3. Security

We’ve not only solved the Ethereum scaling problem with immediacy, but anyone currently using Ethereum will be able to seamlessly transfer to our network without making any code changes to get:

1. 10x more decentralization
2. 100x increase in speed
3. 1000x improvement in energy consumption

Let’s take these one by one and break them down because this is a tremendously difficult problem to solve and it’s a controversial one. If it was easy you wouldn’t be reading this white paper. Let’s start with decentralization because that’s probably one of the most controversial topics today.

The promise of a truly decentralized network and the currently reality are two dramatically\ different things. At the time of this writing 4 companies in China account for 70-80% of all the mining activity for all the major cryptocurrencies including Ethereum. That is about as far from true decentralization as you can get, yet the purists still want to argue its merits. We obviously  disagree and further acknowledge that true decentralization in its purest form is not possible today without making some sacrifices to get as close as possible.

So, then what is the next best solution and how do we solve this decentralization problem? Our solution is to take a step back towards the middle, or in this case towards centralization, to take a leap forward in creating the most decentralized solution possible. Sometimes you have to take a step or two back to make a leap forward.

GoChain, a standalone blockchain, is a next generation smart contract platform. It’s built upon an improved Ethereum codebase that solves the scaling problem with immediacy. Right now Ethereum can only process 13 transactions per second and as such their network is at capacity, yet it’s the industry standard. There are other players coming into the space trying to build new blockchains to solve this scalability issue but that won’t solve the Ethereum scaling problem. Our public network has shown in excess of 1300 transactions per second ongoing with stability and has been running as high as 2400 transactions per second.

Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, has labeled scalability a trilema where all 3 problems need to be solved simultaneously:

1. Scalability
2. Decentralization
3. Security

We’ve not only solved the Ethereum scaling problem with immediacy, but anyone currently using Ethereum will be able to seamlessly transfer to our network without making any code changes to get:

1. 10x more decentralization
2. 100x increase in speed
3. 1000x improvement in energy consumption

Let’s take these one by one and break them down because this is a tremendously difficult problem to solve and it’s a controversial one. If it was easy you wouldn’t be reading this white paper. Let’s start with decentralization because that’s probably one of the most controversial topics today.

The promise of a truly decentralized network and the currently reality are two dramatically\ different things. At the time of this writing 4 companies in China account for 70-80% of all the mining activity for all the major cryptocurrencies including Ethereum. That is about as far from true decentralization as you can get, yet the purists still want to argue its merits. We obviously  disagree and further acknowledge that true decentralization in its purest form is not possible today without making some sacrifices to get as close as possible.

So, then what is the next best solution and how do we solve this decentralization problem? Our solution is to take a step back towards the middle, or in this case towards centralization, to take a leap forward in creating the most decentralized solution possible. Sometimes you have to take a step or two back to make a leap forward.

We are doing this by changing the consensus algorithm from Proof of Work (POW) to Proof of Reputation (POR). POR is an upgraded, stronger, and more secure form of Proof of Authority (POA). In POA the transactions and blocks are validated by approved accounts known as validators. POA has typically been used in private networks and most recently a few companies that have adopted it to use individuals as the validators whose identities are publicly disclosed and at stake.

In exchange for staking their identities they are rewarded and monetarily incentivized to process transactions. With the individual’s identities disclosed this is meant to disincentivize them from being bad actors because it would damage their reputation. We don’t think this goes far enough because as the value of the network grows the incentive to cheat will become larger and larger.

This is why we’ve come up with POR which uses companies as validators not individuals. A company with a reputation has a lot more to lose than an individual and is a much stronger deterrent to be a bad actor because the risk is much larger. A company caught cheating would not only be risking its reputation. It would be risking its entire market cap and the reputation of the officers and shareholders of the company. It would have significantly more to lose than any one individual.

Taking it a step further we plan to use 50 companies in 50 different countries as the validators to force decentralization. By spreading the validators across 50 different companies with reputations at stake it should create almost perfect decentralization and make the network very difficult to be compromised. Furthermore, by spreading the nodes geographically no one government, like the US or China, can come in and take over the network. These two considerations should deter any 51% attacks.

How will the validators be chosen? Initially, GoChain will choose the validators and then the selection process will be turned over to the network. What kind of companies will they be? Think, Venture backed startups with a burn rate, VC partners, angel investors, and new product or service. By using these types of companies or larger there is a huge incentive maintain network integrity to protect their market cap and professional integrity.