As the adoption of blockchain technology gathers pace, more and more enterprises are exploring how to transform operations by leveraging the many benefits that blockchain technology provides.
Growing demand necessitates a blockchain that is capable of handling a high throughput, while on the other hand one that is able to guarantee that data stored on the blockchain is safe and always available. Since its launch in 2018, the VechainThor blockchain has had zero downtime or issues. For blockchains that use the Nakamoto consensus mechanism, like Bitcoin and Vechain, there is a non-zero probability that a transaction could be reverted due to double-spending. While this is fine for daily uses, it could be troublesome in some security-sensitive use cases where data loss is unwanted.
On 17 November 2022 at block height 13815000, after years of development and testing, the VechainThor blockchain upgraded to a new and improved consensus mechanism called Proof of Authority 2.0 (POA2.0).
POA2.0 introduces Finality to prevent data loss, making Vechain the most secure enterprise-grade blockchain in the industry.
A new era has dawned!
At 8:10 GMT, the final stage of PoA2.0 seamlessly hardforked from mainnet, adding Finality to #VeChainThor.
With it, #VeChain technologies provide the perfect platform for #sustainability, both in energy consumption & real-world change. #Blockchain $VET https://t.co/3Ida4xVZxR
— vechain (@vechainofficial) November 17, 2022
POA2.0 – Introducing block Finality
Proof of Authority 2.0 takes the best traits of the Nakamoto consensus mechanism and Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) and introduces a new mechanism to it, called Finality with One Bit, that guarantees finality of blocks and the transactions in them, ensuring no data will ever be lost.
Finality with One Bit is by far the most efficient and fastest finality gadget developed amongst all finality gadgets in Nakamoto consensus blockchains. For example Casper in Ethereum and Grandpa in Polkadot, introduce a separate voting mechanism in which nodes vote and votes need to be collected by block proposers. In Finality with One Bit, votes are directly cast in the blockdata with only one extra bit of data needed, completely eliminating this process and improving the speed of the VechainThor blockchain compared to other blockchains like Ethereum and Polkadot.
After many years of hard work, #VeChainThor's most significant mainnet hard fork is ready for deployment following the successful vote on VIP-220, or 'Finality with one Bit' (FOB).
PoA2.0 is game-changing for #VeChain.
Let's explore what users will need to do in a thread👇 $VET pic.twitter.com/uxulpfRc6W
— vechain (@vechainofficial) November 7, 2022
Last but not least, most existing finality mechanisms follow the view-based paradigm of BFT algorithms. Nodes will have to lock themselves to a view-only state until consensus is reached. This lock could result in a lengthy recovery period in case when the network suffers from a major failure. On the other hand, in Proof of Authority 2.0, nodes are implicitly locked, and as a result, recover from network failure as soon as the network returns to normal.
