STEGOS: Completely Private, Confidential, and Scalable Cryptocurrency
In this digital age, where many things that are important to us are linked to the internet, we are unknowingly given away our privacy in exchange for some goodies that comes with the Internet. It is more easier to spy and intrude to someone digital life now than some years ago and as we get more connected to the Internet, we lose more of our privacy.
Many of us think that the advent of many privacy blockchain projects like Monero, Zcash and many other will solve the issue but what will see from them are not enticing as a lot of elements slow down their adoption by the public.
Stegos is working to create a blockchain privacy protection platform that will solve the issue of privacy in payments and messaging and also create a workable atmosphere for developers to create various types of privacy-related decentralized applications.
Things are moving fast and there's no time to waste, internet has taken over and new softwares are springing up everyday.
Many outstanding developers have contributed their quota in making the internet more secured and prune against privacy intruders. Tim Bernee Lee and other have spearhead the next disruption of the internet. Brendan Eich who is the creator of JavaScript programming language and Mozilla Firefox browser is the one working on Brave Browser, Brian Cohen who created the BitTorrent protocol is working on a network that will be solve the issue of payments.
The list of those who have contributed largely to the development of the internet protocol that we are currently enjoying and who is still the internet should offer more than this is countless.
They dreamed of a world where anyone at anywhere will be able to connect and communicate on the internet effortlessly without sacrificing their privacy but many intermediaries have hijacked this dream and have infiltrated internet hardware and software infrastructure to intrude into the privacy of internet users. The trend now is that government institutions, Telcoms, applications developers, search engines, bloggers and many other internet players are building their businesses in a way that the privacy of their users will not be guaranteed.
What We Have Now
Since many solutions have been offered before, the question one may ask if the solutions on ground are not working effectively, then what's the solution. Many solutions are already working which includes both centralized and decentralized solutions. Top centralized messaging apps globally which also supports payments are not fully private.
Many efforts have been made to create decentralized applications for communications like decentralized email system, decentralized login system, decentralized browser, decentralized messaging app, decentralized web hosting etc. We also see a concerted efforts by DAapps developers to create private and anonymous payments apps.
Many things have been done and work is still in progress but their are many reasons why decentralized applications have not gotten the needed attention and adoption from the public.
Reasons for Slow Adoption of Decentralized Applications
Not Mobile Friendly: Goggle has been disciplining websites that are not mobile friendly for some years. Google takes this very serious because over 80% of web contents and apps are easy to be used on mobile phones. People access the internet more often with their mobile devices and the reaoms for this is because they are handy, portable, and pocket friendly.
But most decentralized solutions are not mobile friendly and they are also somehow difficult to understand by average internet user. As it is now, users experience of many decentralized services are very poor and this is the reason why only few make use of them.
Unsustainable Governance: Most of the current decentralized solutions make use of Proof of Work (PoW) which is not sustainable and not friendly to the environment. PoW protocol consume a lot of electricity and some of them have even consumed electricity more than some countries.
Slow Performance: There are many centralized chatting applications that can handle millions of chats and transactions per seconds but most of the decentralized alternatives can only handle less than a thousand per second, this is too small and can't be adopted by the masses
What make Stegos to be the Right Solution
Stegos is an amazing project and their approach in building a platform for private messaging and payments is highly innovative. Stegos as a whole is not just a fork of an existing platform, the team built a whole new project which is fully private, easy to use and friendly to the development of new applications.
The Incentive Approach: Stegos make use of the UTXO form of accounting and the Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol to build their protocol after making a lot of changes to it. The new protocol developed by Stegos out of the two is GPoS(gamified Proof-of-Stake). This consensus rewards users based on weighted stakes and also based on network uptime using the validated service rewards to give users with less stake, a considerable amount of network activity and then share tokens with them. In order to drive adoption by the masses, Stegos will ensure the creation of red packets which is almost the same to WeChat's red packets. This red packets will ensure easing organizing and distribution of airdrops and gives away which will entice many to the platform.
A Privacy Ecosystem: Stegos will develop a mobile app which will be used for payments and messaging. For Stegos to succeed as an ecosystem, the platform will introduce the Trusted Application Container (TAC) which is built by developers and for developers. This container will be a platform where developers can build all kinds of privacy-based apps apps with basic html,css and JavaScript. An SDK for thorough documentation will also be available
Data is the number one citizen on the Stegos ecosystem,it will develop a mobile app for both messaging and payments. To thrive as an ecosystem,it will introduce the Trusted Application Container(TAC) built by developers for developers,this will enable developers build privacy apps with basic html,css and JavaScript.It will also provide an SDK and thorough documentation. People will be able to download privacy apps from the Stegos App Store. For some time now, it's not an easy thing to use privacy coins to pay for goods and services but Stegos has created a solution to this by creating a marketplace where buyers and sellers can meet to transact with their Stegos tokens.
Networking: Stegos blockchain protocol is made up of three nodes which are; the bootstrap nodes which function as a node that helps incoming nodes be working, they also store unpruned version of the network. The second node which is the compact nodes stored the compact version of the blockchain while the third node which is lightclient nodes is use to keep track of headers and earning of rewards. To find solution to the issue of data currently facing blockchain designs, Stegos will use blockcrunch protocol to trim it and make it more compatible.
Stegos Team
Stegos Roadmap
Stegos Partners
Final Notes
This article is a broad review of Stegos which is a private, confidential and scalable blockchain which is sustainable environmentally and fully optimized for storage and transmission of data and payments. By assertivel trimming the blockchain, Stegos is able to support a different kind of on-chain features that goes beyond simple transfer of tokens. By bringing together chat, an on-chain app store and a trusted application container (TAC), Stegos ensures every part of a fully private exchange of goods and services and not just the final payment step. Stegos team is working on bringing the blockchain into reality and its development can be followed on Github.
Useful Links
WEBSITE: https://.stegos.com
WHITEPAPER: https://github.com/stegos/stegos/wiki/Whitepaper-EN
GITHUB: https://github.com/stegos/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/stegos4privacy
TELEGRAM: https://t.me/stegos4privacy_official
Written by Timileyin
My Telegram Username: @wavesprotocol