Most people that hear of Bitcoin will think of it as a currency, maybe a store of value. When talking of blockchain, we might associate the underlying protocol of cryptocurrencies with that. However, when it comes down to it, a blockchain is nothing more and nothing less than a distributed database where every participant stores a local copy of transaction data to ensure that no one entity can mess with the data.
The challenge of many blockchain protocols is that they can’t solve the trilemma surrounding decentralization, security, and scalability. As the common wisdom goes, a protocol can only have two of those. The more decentralized a blockchain is, the more nodes will be part of block verification which negatively affects scalability. Therefore, some of the most decentralized networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum experience have high transaction costs and relatively “slow” block times compared to centralized databases. The Bitcoin community is putting a lot of hope into introducing the lightning network that’ll enable micropayments. At the same time, Ethereum plans to move to Proof-of-Stake to resolve its most pressing issues.
These are all promising solutions, but one big challenge remains: blockchain is no easy technology for developers to build on. It often requires special coding language and knowledge that’s hard to come by in a competitive market. This makes it hard for an existing business to execute the idea of introducing blockchain into their operations or products.
The team behind Chromia is taking the best from existing scaling solutions and bringing them together in a back-end tech stack that allows companies to continue building in ways they are used to already.
Chromia, formerly Chromapolis, is a project by the Swedish company called Chromaway, founded by Alex Mizrahi as CTO, Or Perelman as COO, and Iddo Bentov and Henrik Hjelte as CEO in 2014. The team is no stranger to blockchain and crypto as they were one of the first to developed a protocol for the issuance of new tokens, even before Ethereum was established. While they didn’t use bitcoin 2.0 as they named it, they used all the experience to create Chromia.
Chromia makes it easier for existing businesses to adopt blockchain without having to change much. The chromia blockchain works similarly to a relational database, which businesses are used to working with.
Relational Database: This is a type of database that stores and provides access to data points that are related to each other. A simple example would be storing customers' names with a unique identifier, customer ID, in one table and then relating this to another table containing addresses. By using the customer id across tables, we’re able to relate the data, easily query it and make changes without having to store data points twice.
Relational databases form the backbone of our information economy; without us knowing it, most of the online services we use frequently rely on this type of database.
To create a similar experience, the Chromia blockchain gives each dApp its own dedicated blockchain. Instead of running dApps on the whole set of nodes, each dApp will be deployed on its specific set of nodes — basically creating a side chain. Thanks to this architecture, each dApp can have its own token and access nearly unlimited scalability.
One big challenge with Ethereum and the growth of DeFi in recent months has been that all services compete for scalability and verification on an already congested network. For anyone looking to transfer a small amount of ERC-20 tokens, that resulted in having to pay disproportionally high transaction fees.
On Chromia, apps and services don’t compete, which reduced the danger of network congestion to zero, making it a perfect choice for sectors like gaming, real estate, finance, or healthcare.
Transactions on Chromia are verified in 2 seconds, fast enough to support in-person and in-game payments. The blockchain already supports 50 million token transfers daily. The network is secured through a BFT consensus algorithm.
The native platform token: CHR is used with dApps on the Chromia blockchain and pays for transaction fees. It also plays a minor part in staking, but unlike traditional staking, depositing CHR doesn’t translate into higher rewards but is more similar to depositing to access certain features later.
My Neighbor Alice
The first game running on Chromia is “My Neighbor Alice,” a multiplayer game drawing inspiration from Animal Crossing. The game uses Chromia as technical support for the game back-end functions combined with NFTs to represent unique objects such as land, items, or player avatars. To run the dApp, the MNA team is paying CHR to different nodes on the Chromia blockchain that manage transactions and verification.
Thanks to the relational blockchain architecture, the game can completely function without a centralized server making it more secure without sacrificing decentralization.
The Chromia NFT standards, also called Originals, offer an exciting feature: the ability to have NFTs that can only be used a specific set of times. For example, a game item like a shovel can be used just 5 times. So one player could use it once and then sell it again. The next player still can dig 4 holes with that shovel. This makes it more valuable than similar items that can only be used once.
While “My Neighbor Alice“is just the first major game to use Chromia, the success of this dApp will certainly increase interest and use of the CHR token. The Chromia team has already proven once that they were ahead of their time, and with a blockchain that makes it easy for businesses to utilize this innovative tech without having to change when change is often the biggest hindrance, could be a gamechanger.
CHR will be trading on Bitcoin.com Exchange with USDT pair from June 4th.
