Kertas Putih Pi1

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You can find the original Pi white paper in Situs resmi.
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Preface

As the world becomes increasingly digital, cryptocurrency is a next natural step in the evolution of money. Pi is the first digital currency for everyday people, representing a major step forward in the adoption of cryptocurrency worldwide.

Our Mission: Build a cryptocurrency and smart contracts platform secured and operated by everyday people.

Our Vision: Build the world’s most inclusive peer-to-peer marketplace, fueled by Pi, the world’s most widely used cryptocurrency

DISCLAIMER for more advanced readers: Because Pi’s mission is to be inclusive as possible, we’re going to take this opportunity to introduce our blockchain newbies to the rabbit hole 🙂


Introduction: Why cryptocurrencies matter

Saat ini, transaksi keuangan sehari-hari kami mengandalkan pihak ketiga yang tepercaya untuk menyimpan catatan transaksi. Misalnya, ketika Anda melakukan transaksi bank, sistem perbankan menyimpan catatan & menjamin bahwa transaksi tersebut aman & terpercaya. Demikian juga, ketika Cindy mentransfer $5 ke Steve menggunakan PayPal, PayPal menyimpan catatan utama $5 dolar yang didebit dari rekening Cindy dan $5 dikreditkan ke Steve. Perantara seperti bank, PayPal, dan anggota lain dari sistem ekonomi saat ini memainkan peran penting dalam mengatur transaksi keuangan dunia.

Namun, peran perantara tepercaya ini juga memiliki keterbatasan:

  1. Pengambilan nilai yang tidak adil. Perantara ini mengumpulkan miliaran dolar dalam penciptaan kekayaan (kapitalisasi pasar PayPal adalah ~ $130 miliar), tetapi hampir tidak memberikan apa pun kepada mereka pelanggan – orang-orang biasa di lapangan, yang uangnya menggerakkan proporsi yang berarti dari ekonomi global. Semakin banyak orang yang tertinggal.
  2. Biaya. Bank dan perusahaan mengenakan biaya besar untuk memfasilitasi transaksi. Biaya-biaya ini sering kali secara tidak proporsional berdampak pada populasi berpenghasilan rendah yang memiliki alternatif paling sedikit.
  3. Sensor. Jika perantara tepercaya tertentu memutuskan bahwa Anda seharusnya tidak dapat memindahkan uang Anda, itu dapat membatasi pergerakan uang Anda.
  4. Diizinkan. Perantara tepercaya berfungsi sebagai penjaga gerbang yang dapat secara sewenang-wenang mencegah siapa pun menjadi bagian dari jaringan.
  5. Nama samaran. Pada saat masalah privasi semakin mendesak, penjaga gerbang yang kuat ini dapat secara tidak sengaja mengungkapkan — atau memaksa Anda untuk mengungkapkan — lebih banyak informasi keuangan tentang diri Anda daripada yang mungkin Anda inginkan.

“Sistem uang elektronik peer-to-peer” Bitcoin, diluncurkan pada tahun 2009 oleh programmer (atau kelompok) anonim Satoshi Nakamoto, adalah momen penting untuk kebebasan uang. Untuk pertama kalinya dalam sejarah, orang dapat bertukar nilai dengan aman, tanpa memerlukan pihak ketiga atau perantara tepercaya. Membayar dalam Bitcoin berarti bahwa orang-orang seperti Steve dan Cindy dapat saling membayar secara langsung, melewati biaya institusional, hambatan, dan gangguan. Bitcoin benar-benar mata uang tanpa batas, menggerakkan dan menghubungkan ekonomi global baru.

Pengantar Buku Besar Terdistribusi

Bitcoin mencapai prestasi bersejarah ini dengan menggunakan terdistribusi catatan. Sementara sistem keuangan saat ini bergantung pada catatan kebenaran pusat tradisional, catatan Bitcoin dikelola oleh komunitas “validator” terdistribusi, yang mengakses dan memperbarui buku besar publik ini. Bayangkan protokol Bitcoin sebagai “Google Sheet” yang dibagikan secara global yang berisi catatan transaksi, divalidasi, dan dikelola oleh komunitas terdistribusi ini.

Terobosan Bitcoin (dan teknologi blockchain umum) adalah bahwa, meskipun catatan disimpan oleh komunitas, teknologi memungkinkan mereka untuk selalu mencapai konsensus tentang transaksi yang benar, memastikan bahwa penipu tidak dapat mencatat transaksi palsu atau mengambil alih sistem. Kemajuan teknologi ini memungkinkan penghapusan perantara terpusat, tanpa mengorbankan keamanan finansial transaksional.

Manfaat dari buku besar yang didistribusikan

Selain desentralisasi, bitcoin, atau cryptocurrency secara umum, bagikan beberapa properti bagus yang menghasilkan uang lebih cerdas dan aman, meskipun cryptocurrency yang berbeda mungkin lebih kuat di beberapa properti dan lebih lemah di properti lain, berdasarkan implementasi protokol mereka yang berbeda. Cryptocurrency disimpan di dompet kriptografi yang diidentifikasi oleh alamat yang dapat diakses publik, dan diamankan dengan kata sandi pribadi yang sangat kuat, yang disebut kunci pribadi. Kunci pribadi ini menandatangani transaksi secara kriptografis dan hampir tidak mungkin untuk membuat tanda tangan palsu. Ini menyediakan keamanan dan ketidakteraturan. Tidak seperti rekening bank tradisional yang dapat disita oleh otoritas pemerintah, cryptocurrency di dompet Anda tidak akan pernah dapat diambil oleh siapa pun tanpa kunci pribadi Anda. Cryptocurrency adalah tahan sensor karena sifatnya yang terdesentralisasi karena siapa pun dapat mengirimkan transaksi ke komputer mana pun di jaringan untuk dicatat dan divalidasi. Transaksi mata uang kripto adalah kekal karena setiap blok transaksi mewakili bukti kriptografi (hash) dari semua blok sebelumnya yang ada sebelumnya. Setelah seseorang mengirimi Anda uang, mereka tidak dapat mencuri kembali pembayaran mereka kepada Anda (yaitu, tidak ada cek terpental di blockchain). Beberapa cryptocurrency bahkan dapat mendukung transaksi atom. “Kontrak pintar” yang dibangun di atas cryptocurrency ini tidak hanya mengandalkan hukum untuk penegakannya, tetapi secara langsung ditegakkan melalui kode yang dapat diaudit secara publik, yang membuatnya yg tak dpt dipercaya dan berpotensi menyingkirkan perantara di banyak bisnis, misalnya Escrow untuk real estat.

Mengamankan buku besar yang didistribusikan (Penambangan)

Salah satu tantangan dalam memelihara catatan transaksi terdistribusi adalah keamanan — khususnya, bagaimana memiliki buku besar yang terbuka dan dapat diedit sambil mencegah aktivitas penipuan. Untuk mengatasi tantangan ini, Bitcoin memperkenalkan proses baru yang disebut Penambangan (menggunakan algoritma konsensus "Bukti Kerja") untuk menentukan siapa yang "dipercaya" untuk membuat pembaruan pada catatan transaksi bersama.

Anda dapat menganggap penambangan sebagai jenis permainan ekonomi yang memaksa "Validator" untuk membuktikan kemampuannya ketika mencoba menambahkan transaksi ke dalam catatan. Untuk memenuhi syarat, Validator harus memecahkan serangkaian teka-teki komputasi yang kompleks. Validator yang memecahkan teka-teki terlebih dahulu dihargai dengan diizinkan untuk memposting blok transaksi terbaru. Memposting blok transaksi terbaru memungkinkan Validator untuk “menambang” Hadiah Blok – saat ini 12,5 bitcoin (atau ~$40.000 pada saat penulisan).

Proses ini sangat aman, tetapi menuntut daya komputasi dan konsumsi energi yang sangat besar karena pengguna pada dasarnya “membakar uang” untuk memecahkan teka-teki komputasi yang menghasilkan lebih banyak Bitcoin. Rasio burn-to-reward sangat menghukum sehingga Validator selalu berkepentingan untuk memposting transaksi jujur ​​ke catatan Bitcoin.


Masalah: Sentralisasi kekuasaan dan uang membuat Cryptocurrency Generasi Pertama di luar jangkauan

Pada hari-hari awal Bitcoin, ketika hanya beberapa orang yang bekerja untuk memvalidasi transaksi dan menambang blok pertama, siapa pun dapat memperoleh 50 BTC hanya dengan menjalankan perangkat lunak penambangan Bitcoin di komputer pribadi mereka. Ketika mata uang mulai mendapatkan popularitas, penambang yang cerdas menyadari bahwa mereka dapat memperoleh lebih banyak jika mereka memiliki lebih dari satu komputer yang berfungsi untuk menambang.

Ketika Bitcoin terus meningkat nilainya, seluruh perusahaan mulai bermunculan untuk menambang. Perusahaan-perusahaan ini mengembangkan chip khusus (“ASIC”) dan membangun server server yang besar menggunakan chip ASIC ini untuk menambang Bitcoin. Munculnya perusahaan pertambangan besar ini, yang dikenal mendorong Bitcoin Gold Rush, membuatnya sangat sulit bagi orang biasa untuk berkontribusi pada jaringan dan mendapatkan imbalan. Upaya mereka juga mulai memakan energi komputasi dalam jumlah yang semakin besar, berkontribusi pada meningkatnya masalah lingkungan di seluruh dunia.

Kemudahan menambang Bitcoin dan kebangkitan selanjutnya dari peternakan penambangan Bitcoin dengan cepat menghasilkan sentralisasi besar-besaran kekuatan produksi dan kekayaan dalam jaringan Bitcoin. Untuk memberikan beberapa konteks, 87% dari semua Bitcoin sekarang dimiliki oleh 1% dari jaringan mereka, banyak dari koin ini ditambang secara gratis di hari-hari awal mereka. Sebagai contoh lain, Bitmain, salah satu operasi penambangan terbesar Bitcoin telah menghasilkan miliaran pendapatan dan keuntungan.

Pemusatan kekuasaan dalam jaringan Bitcoin membuatnya sangat sulit dan mahal bagi kebanyakan orang. Jika Anda ingin mendapatkan Bitcoin, opsi termudah Anda adalah:

  1. Tambang Sendiri. Cukup sambungkan perangkat keras khusus (ini sebuah rig di Amazon, jika Anda tertarik!) dan pergi ke kota. Ketahuilah bahwa karena Anda akan bersaing dengan peternakan server besar-besaran dari seluruh dunia, menghabiskan energi sebanyak negara Swiss, Anda tidak akan dapat menambang banyak
  2. Beli Bitcoin di bursa. Hari ini, Anda dapat membeli Bitcoin dengan harga satuan $3.500 / koin pada saat penulisan (catatan: Anda dapat membeli sejumlah pecahan Bitcoin!) Tentu saja, Anda juga akan mengambil risiko besar dalam melakukannya karena harga Bitcoin cukup fluktuatif.

Bitcoin adalah yang pertama menunjukkan bagaimana cryptocurrency dapat mengganggu model keuangan saat ini, memberi orang kemampuan untuk melakukan transaksi tanpa ada pihak ketiga yang menghalangi. Peningkatan kebebasan, fleksibilitas, dan privasi terus mendorong langkah yang tak terhindarkan menuju mata uang digital sebagai norma baru. Terlepas dari manfaatnya, konsentrasi uang dan kekuatan Bitcoin (kemungkinan tidak disengaja) menghadirkan penghalang yang berarti untuk adopsi arus utama. Karena tim inti Pi telah melakukan penelitian untuk mencoba memahami mengapa orang enggan memasuki ruang cryptocurrency. Orang-orang secara konsisten menyebut risiko berinvestasi/menambang sebagai penghalang utama untuk masuk.


Solusi: Pi – Mengaktifkan penambangan di ponsel

Setelah mengidentifikasi hambatan utama untuk adopsi ini, Tim Inti Pi berangkat untuk menemukan cara yang memungkinkan orang biasa untuk menambang (atau mendapatkan hadiah cryptocurrency untuk memvalidasi transaksi pada catatan transaksi yang didistribusikan). Sebagai penyegaran, salah satu tantangan utama yang muncul dengan memelihara catatan transaksi terdistribusi adalah memastikan bahwa pembaruan pada catatan terbuka ini tidak curang. Sementara proses Bitcoin untuk memperbarui catatannya terbukti (membakar energi / uang untuk membuktikan kepercayaan), itu tidak terlalu ramah pengguna (atau planet!). Untuk Pi, kami memperkenalkan persyaratan desain tambahan untuk menggunakan algoritme konsensus yang juga akan sangat ramah pengguna dan idealnya memungkinkan penambangan di komputer pribadi dan ponsel.

Dalam membandingkan algoritme konsensus yang ada (proses yang mencatat transaksi ke dalam buku besar yang didistribusikan), Stellar Consensus Protocol muncul sebagai kandidat utama untuk memungkinkan penambangan mobile-first yang ramah pengguna. Protokol Konsensus Stellar (SCP) dirancang oleh David Mazières seorang profesor Ilmu Komputer di Stanford yang juga menjabat sebagai Kepala Ilmuwan di Yayasan Pengembangan Bintang. SCP menggunakan mekanisme baru yang disebut Perjanjian Bizantium Federasi untuk memastikan bahwa pembaruan ke buku besar yang didistribusikan akurat dan dapat dipercaya. SCP juga digunakan dalam praktik melalui blockchain Stellar yang telah beroperasi sejak 2015.

Pengantar yang disederhanakan untuk algoritma konsensus

Sebelum melompat ke pengenalan algoritma konsensus Pi, ada baiknya untuk memiliki penjelasan sederhana tentang apa yang dilakukan algoritma konsensus untuk blockchain dan jenis algoritma konsensus yang umumnya digunakan oleh protokol blockchain saat ini, misalnya Bitcoin dan SCP. Bagian ini secara eksplisit ditulis dengan cara yang terlalu disederhanakan demi kejelasan, dan tidak lengkap. Untuk akurasi yang lebih tinggi, lihat bagian Adaptasi ke SCP di bawah ini dan bacalah kertas protokol konsensus bintang.

Blockchain adalah sistem terdistribusi yang toleran terhadap kesalahan yang bertujuan untuk memesan daftar blok transaksi secara total. Sistem terdistribusi yang toleran terhadap kesalahan adalah bidang ilmu komputer yang telah dipelajari selama beberapa dekade. Mereka disebut sistem terdistribusi karena mereka tidak memiliki server terpusat tetapi mereka terdiri dari daftar komputer yang terdesentralisasi (disebut simpul atau teman sebaya) yang perlu mencapai konsensus tentang konten dan total pemesanan blok. Mereka juga disebut toleransi kesalahan karena mereka dapat mentolerir tingkat tertentu dari node yang salah ke dalam sistem (misalnya hingga 33% dari node dapat rusak dan sistem secara keseluruhan terus beroperasi secara normal).

Ada dua kategori besar dari algoritma konsensus: Yang memilih node sebagai pemimpin yang menghasilkan blok berikutnya, dan yang tidak ada pemimpin eksplisit tetapi semua node mencapai konsensus tentang apa blok berikutnya setelah bertukar suara dengan mengirim pesan komputer satu sama lain. (Sebenarnya, kalimat terakhir mengandung banyak ketidakakuratan, tetapi ini membantu kami menjelaskan garis besarnya.)

Bitcoin menggunakan tipe pertama dari algoritma konsensus: Semua node bitcoin bersaing satu sama lain dalam memecahkan teka-teki kriptografi. Karena solusi ditemukan secara acak, pada dasarnya node yang menemukan solusi pertama, secara kebetulan, dipilih sebagai pemimpin putaran yang menghasilkan blok berikutnya. Algoritma ini disebut "Bukti kerja" dan menghasilkan banyak konsumsi energi.

Pengantar sederhana untuk Stellar Consensus Protocol

Pi menggunakan jenis lain dari algoritma konsensus dan didasarkan pada Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) dan algoritma yang disebut Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA). Algoritme seperti itu tidak memiliki pemborosan energi tetapi memerlukan pertukaran banyak pesan jaringan agar node mencapai "konsensus" tentang apa yang seharusnya menjadi blok berikutnya. Setiap node dapat secara independen menentukan apakah suatu transaksi valid atau tidak, misalnya otoritas melakukan transisi dan pengeluaran ganda, berdasarkan tanda tangan kriptografi dan riwayat transaksi. Namun, agar jaringan komputer dapat menyepakati transaksi mana yang akan dicatat dalam satu blok dan urutan transaksi dan blok ini, mereka perlu saling mengirim pesan dan memiliki beberapa putaran pemungutan suara untuk mencapai konsensus. Secara intuitif, pesan seperti itu dari komputer yang berbeda di jaringan tentang blok mana yang berikutnya akan terlihat seperti berikut: “Saya mengusulkan kita semua memilih blok A untuk menjadi yang berikutnya”; "SAYA Pilih untuk blok A menjadi blok berikutnya”; "SAYA Konfirmasi that the majority of the nodes I trust also voted for block A”, from which the consensus algorithm enables this node to conclude that “A is the next block; and there could be no block other than A as the next block”;  Even though the above voting steps seem a lot, the internet is adequately fast and these messages are lightweight, thus such consensus algorithms are more lightweight than Bitcoin’s proof of work. One major representative of such algorithms is called Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). Several of the top blockchains today are based on variants of BFT, such as NEO and Ripple.

One major criticism of BFT is that it has a centralization point: because voting is involved, the set of nodes participating in the voting “quorum” are centrally determined by the creator of the system in its beginning. The contribution of FBA is that, instead of having one centrally determined quorum, each node sets their own “quorum slices”, which will in turn form different quorums. New nodes can join the network in a decentralized way: they declare the nodes that they trust and convince other nodes to trust them, but they don’t have to convince any central authority.

SCP is one instantiation of FBA. Instead of burning energy like in Bitcoin’s proof of work consensus algorithm, SCP nodes secure the shared record by vouching for other nodes in the network as trustworthy. Each node in the network builds a quorum slice, consisting of other nodes in the network that they deem to be trustworthy. Quorums are formed based on its members quorum slices, and a validator will only accept new transactions if and only if a proportion of nodes in their quorums will also accept the transaction. As validators across the network construct their quorums, these quorums help nodes to reach consensus about transactions with guarantee on security. You can learn more about the Stellar Consensus Protocol by checking out this technical summary of SCP.

Pi’s Adaptations to Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP)

Pi’s consensus algorithm builds atop SCP.  SCP has been formally proven [Mazieres 2015] and is currently implemented within the Stellar Network. Unlike Stellar Network consisting mostly of companies and institutions (e.g., IBM) as nodes, Pi intends to allow devices of individuals to contribute on the protocol level and get rewarded, including mobile phones, laptops and computers. Below is an introduction on how Pi applies SCP to enabling mining by individuals.

There are four roles Pi users can play, as Pi miners. Namely:

  • Pioneer. A user of the Pi mobile app who is simply confirming that they are not a “robot” on a daily basis. This user validates their presence every time they sign in to the app. They can also open the app to request transactions (e.g. make a payment in Pi to another Pioneer)
  • Contributor. A user of the Pi mobile app who is contributing by providing a list of pioneers he or she knows and trusts. In aggregate, Pi contributors will build a global trust graph.
  • Ambassador. A user of the Pi mobile app who is introducing other users into Pi network.
  • Node. A user who is a pioneer, a contributor using the Pi mobile app, and is also running the Pi node software on their desktop or laptop computer. The Pi node software is the software that runs the core SCP algorithm, taking into account the trust graph information provided by the Contributors.

A user can play more than one of the above roles. All roles are necessary, thus all roles are rewarded with newly minted Pi on a daily basis as long as they participated and contributed during that given day. In the loose definition of a “miner” being a user who receives newly minted currency as a reward for contributions, all four roles are considered to be Pi miners. We define“mining” more broadly than its traditional meaning equated to executing proof of work consensus algorithm as in Bitcoin or Ethereum.

First of all, we need to emphasize that the Pi Node software has not been released yet. So this section is offered more as an architectural design and as a request to solicit comments from the technical community. This software will be fully open source and it will also heavily depend on stellar-core which is also open source software, available here. This means that anyone in the community will be able to read, comment and propose improvements on it. Below are the Pi proposed changes to SCP to enable mining by individual devices.

Nodes

For readability, we define as a correctly connected node to be what the SCP paper refers to as an intact node. Also, for readability, we define as the main Pi network to be the set of all intact nodes in the Pi network. The main task of each Node is to be configured to be correctly connected to the main Pi network. Intuitively, a node being incorrectly connected to the main network is similar to a Bitcoin node not being connected to the main bitcoin network.

In SCP’s terms, for a node to get correctly connected means that this node must chose a “quorum slice” such that all resulting quorums that include this node intersect with the existing network’s quorums. More precisely, a node vn+1 is correctly connected to a main network N of n already correctly connected nodes (v1, v2, …, vn) if the resulting system N’ of n+1 nodes (v1, v2, …, vn+1) enjoys quorum intersection. In other words, N’ enjoys quorum intersection if any two of its quorums share a node. — i.e., for all quorums U1 and U2, U1∩U2 ≠ ∅.

The main contribution of Pi over the existing Stellar consensus deployment is that it introduces the concept of a trust graph provided by the Pi Contributors as information that can be used by the Pi nodes when they are setting up their configurations to connect to the main Pi network.

When picking their quorum slices, these Nodes must take into consideration the trust graph provided by the Contributors, including their own security circle. To assist in this decision, we intend to provide auxiliary graph analysis software to assist users running Nodes to make as informed decisions as possible. This software’s daily output will include:

  • a ranked list of nodes ordered by their distance from the current node in the trust graph; a ranked list of nodes based a pagerank analysis of nodes in the trust graph
  • a list of nodes reported by the community as faulty in any way a list of new nodes seeking to join the network
  • a list of most recent articles from the web on the keyword “misbehaving Pi nodes” and other related keywords; a visual representation of Nodes comprising the Pi network similar to what is shown in StellarBeat Quorum monitor [source code]
  • a quorum explorer similar to QuorumExplorer.com [source code]
  • a simulation tool like the one in StellarBeat Quorum monitor that shows the expected resulting impacts to this nodes’ connectivity to the Pi network when the current node’s configuration changes.

An interesting research problem for future work is to develop algorithms that can take into consideration the trust graph and suggest each node an optimal configuration, or even set that configuration automatically. On the first deployment of the Pi Network, while users running Nodes can update their Node configuration at any time, they will be prompted to confirm their configurations daily and asked to update them if they see fit.

Mobile app users

When a Pioneer needs to confirm that a given transaction has been executed (e.g. that they have received Pi) they open the mobile app. At that point, the mobile app connects to one or more Nodes to inquire if the transaction has been recorded on the ledger and also to get the most recent block number and hash value of that block. If that Pioneer is also running a Node the mobile app connects to that Pioneer’s own node. If the Pioneer is not running a node, then the app connects to multiple nodes and to cross check this information. Pioneers will have the ability select which nodes they want their apps to connect to. But to make it simple for most users, the app should have a reasonable default set of nodes, e.g. a number of nodes closest to the user based on the trust graph, along with a random selection of nodes high in pagerank. We ask for your feedback on how the default set of nodes for mobile Pioneers should be selected.

Mining rewards

A beautiful property of the SCP algorithm is that it is more generic than a blockchain. It coordinates consensus across a distributed system of Nodes. This means that the same core algorithm is not only used every few seconds to record new transactions in new blocks, but also it can be used to periodically run more complex computations. For example, once a week, the stellar network is using it to compute inflation on the stellar network and allocate the newly minted tokens proportionally to all stellar coin holders (Stellar’s coin is called lumens). In a similar manner, the Pi network employs SCP once a day to compute the network-wide new Pi distribution across all Pi miners (pioneers, contributors, ambassadors, nodes) who actively participated in any given day. In other words, Pi mining rewards are computed only once daily and not on every block of the blockchain.

For comparison Bitcoin allocates mining rewards on every block and it give all of the reward to the miner who was lucky enough to be able to solve a computationally intensive randomized task. This reward in Bitcoin currently 12.5 Bitcoin (~$40K) is given to only one miner every 10 minutes. This makes it extremely unlikely for any given miner to ever get rewards. As a solution to that, bitcoin miners are getting organized in centralized mining pools, which all contribute processing power, increasing the likelihood of getting rewards, and eventually sharing proportionally those rewards. Mining pools are not only points of centralization, but also their operators get cuts reducing the amount going to individual miners.  In Pi, there is no need for mining pools, since once a day everyone who contributed get a meritocratic distribution of new Pi.

Transaction fees

Similar to Bitcoin transactions, fees are optional in the Pi network. Each block has a certain limit of how many transactions can be included in it. When there is no backlog of transactions, transactions tend to be free. But if there are more transactions, nodes order them by fee, with highest-fee-transactions at the top and pick only the top transactions to be included in the produced blocks. This makes it an open market. Implementation: Fees are proportionally split among Nodes once a day. On every block, the fee of each transaction is transferred into a temporary wallet from where in the end of the day it is distributed to the active miners of the day. This wallet has an unknown private key. Transactions in and out of that wallet are forced by the protocol itself under the consensus of all nodes in the same way the consensus also mints new Pi every day.

Limitations and future work

SCP has been extensively tested for several years as part of the Stellar Network, which at the time of this writing is the ninth largest cryptocurrency in the world. This gives us a quite large degree of confidence in it. One ambition of the Pi project is to scale the number of nodes in the Pi network to be larger than the number of nodes in the Stellar network to allow more everyday users to participate in the core consensus algorithm. Increasing the number of nodes, will inevitably increase the number of network messages that must be exchanged between them. Even though these messages are much smaller than an image or a youtube video, and the Internet today can reliably transfer videos quickly, the number of messages necessary increases with the number of participating nodes, which can become bottleneck to the speed of reaching consensus. This will ultimately slow down the rate, at which new blocks and new transactions are recorded in the network. Thankfully, Stellar is currently much faster than Bitcoin. At the moment, Stellar is calibrated to produce a new block every 3 to 5 seconds, being able to support thousands of transactions per second. By comparison, Bitcoin produces a new block every 10 minutes. Moreover, due to Bitcoin’s lack in the safety guarantee, Bitcoin’s blockchain in rare occasions can be overwritten within the first hour. This means that a user of Bitcoin must wait about 1 hour before they can be sure that a transaction is considered final. SCP guarantees safety, which means after 3-5 seconds one is certain about a transaction. So even with the potential scalability bottleneck,  Pi expects to achieve transaction finality faster than Bitcoin and possibly slower than Stellar, and process more transactions per second than Bitcoin and possibly fewer than Stellar.


While scalability of SCP is still an open research problem. There are multiple promising ways one could speed things up. One possible scalability solution is bloXroute. BloXroute proposes a blockchain distribution network (BDN) that utilizes a global network of servers optimized for network performance. While each BDN is centrally controlled by one organization, they offer a provably neutral message passing acceleration. I.e. BDNs can only serve all nodes fairly without discrimination as messages are encrypted. This means the BDN does not know where messages come from, where they go, or what is inside. This way Pi nodes can have two message passing routes: A fast one through BDN, which is expected to be reliable most of the time, and its original peer-to-peer message passing interface that is fully decentralized and reliable but is slower. The intuition of this idea is vaguely similar to caching: The cache is place where a computer can access data very quickly, speeding the average computation, but it is not guaranteed to always have every needed piece of information. When the cache misses, the computer is slowed down but nothing catastrophic happens. Another solution can be using secure acknowledgment of multicast messages in open Peer-to-Peer networks [Nicolosi and Mazieres 2004] to speed up message propagation among peers.


Pi Economic Model: Balancing Scarcity and Access

Pros and cons of 1st Generation Economic Models

One of Bitcoin’s most impressive innovations is its marriage of distributed systems with economic game theory.

Pros

Fixed Supply

Bitcoin’s economic model is simple. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin in existence. This number is set in code. With only 21M to circulate among 7.5B people around the world, there is not enough Bitcoin to go around. This scarcity is one of most important drivers of Bitcoin’s value.

Decreasing Block Reward

Bitcoin’ distribution scheme, pictured below, further enforces this sense of scarcity. The Bitcoin block mining reward halves every 210,000 blocks (approximately every ~4 years.) In its early days, the Bitcoin block reward was 50 coins. Now, the reward is 12.5, and will further decrease to 6.25 coins in May 2020. Bitcoin’s decreasing rate of distribution means that, even as awareness of the currency grows, there is less to actually mine.

Cons

Inverted Means Uneven

Bitcoin’s inverted distribution model (less people earning more in the beginning, and more people earn less today) is one of the primary contributors to its uneven distribution. With so much Bitcoin in the hands of a few early adopters, new miners are “burning” more energy for less bitcoin.

Hoarding Inhibits Use as a Medium of Exchange

Although Bitcoin was released as a “peer to peer electronic cash” system, the relative scarcity of Bitcoin has impeded Bitcoin’s goal of serving as a medium exchange. Bitcoin’s scarcity has led to its perception as a form of “digital gold” or a digital store of value. The result of this perception is that many Bitcoin holders are unwilling to spend Bitcoin on day-to-day expenses.

The Pi Economic Model

Pi, on the other hand, seeks to strike a balance between creating a sense of scarcity for Pi, while still ensuring that a large amount does not accumulate into a very small number of hands. We want to make sure our users earn more Pi as they make contributions to the network. Pi’s goal is to build an economic model that is sophisticated enough to achieve and balance these priorities while remaining intuitive enough for people to use.

Pi’s economic model design requirements:

  • Simple: Build an intuitive and transparent model
  • Fair distribution: Give a critical mass of the world’s population access to Pi
  • Scarcity: Create a sense of scarcity to sustain Pi’s price over time
  • Meritocratic earning: Reward contributions to build and sustain the network

Pi – Token Supply

Token Emission Policy

  1. Total Max Supply = M + R + D
    1. M = total mining rewards
    2. R = total referral rewards
    3. D = total developer rewards
  2. M = ∫ f(P) dx where f is a logarithmically declining function
    1. P = Population number (e.g., 1st person to join, 2nd person to join, etc.)
  3. R = r * M
    1. r = referral rate (50% total or 25% for both referrer and referee)
  1. D = t * (M + R)
  2. t = developer reward rate (25%)

M – Mining Supply (Based on fixed mining supply minted per person)

In contrast to Bitcoin which created a fixed supply of coins for the entire global population, Pi creates a fixed supply of Pi for each person that joins the network up to the first 100 Million participants. In other words, for each person that joins the Pi Network, a fixed amount of Pi is pre-minted. This supply is then released over the lifetime of that member based on their level of engagement and contribution to network security. The supply is released using an exponentially decreasing function similar to Bitcoin’s over the member’s lifetime.

R – Referral Supply (Based on fixed referral reward minted per person and shared b/w referrer and referee)

In order for a currency to have value, it must be widely distributed. To incentivize this goal, the protocol also generates a fixed amount of Pi that serves as a referral bonus for both the referrer and the referee (or both parent and offspring 🙂 This shared pool can be mined by both parties over their lifetime – when both parties are actively mining. Both referrer and referee are able to draw upon this pool in order to avoid exploitative models where referrers are able to “prey” on their referees. The referral bonus serves as a network-level incentive to grow the Pi Network while also incentivizing engagement among members in actively securing the network.

D – Developer Reward Supply (Additional Pi minted to support ongoing development)

Pi will fund its ongoing development with a “Developer Reward” that is minted alongside each Pi coin that is minted for mining and referrals. Traditionally, cryptocurrency protocols have minted a fixed amount of supply that is immediately placed into treasury. Because Pi’s total supply is dependent on the number of members in the network, Pi progressively mints its developer reward as the network scales. The progressive minting of Pi’s developer reward is meant to align the incentives of Pi’s contributors with the overall health of the network.

f is a logarithmically decreasing function – early members earn more

While Pi seeks to avoid extreme concentrations of wealth, the network also seeks to reward earlier members and their contributions with a relatively larger share of Pi. When networks such as Pi are in their early days, they tend to provide a lower utility to participants. For example, imagine having the very first telephone in the world. It would be a great technological innovation but not extremely useful. However, as more people acquire telephones, each telephone holder gets more utility out of the network. In order to reward people that come to the network early, Pi’s individual mining reward and referral rewards decrease as a function of the number of people in the network. In other words, there is a certain amount of Pi that is reserved for each “slot” in the Pi Network.


Utility: Pooling and monetizing our time online

Today, everyone is sitting on a veritable treasure trove of untapped resources. Each of us spend hours day on our phones. While on our phones, each of our views, posts or clicks creates extraordinary profits for large corporations. At Pi, we believe that people have the right to capture value created from their resources.

We all know that we can do more together than we can alone. On today’s web, massive corporations like Google, Amazon, Facebook have immense leverage against individual consumers. As a result, they are able to capture the lionshare of value created by individual consumers on the web. Pi levels the playing field by allowing its members to pool their collective resources so they can get a share of the value that they create.

The graphic below is the Pi Stack, where we see particularly promising opportunities for helping our members capture value. Below, we go into each of these areas in more detail.

Introducing the Pi Stack – Unleashing underutilized resources

Pi Ledger And Shared Trust Graph – Scaling Trust Across The Web

One of the biggest challenges on the internet is knowing who to trust. Today, we rely on the  rating systems of providers such as Amazon, eBay, Yelp, to know who we can transact with on the internet. Despite the fact that we, customers, do the hard work of rating and reviewing our peers, these internet intermediaries capture the lionshare of the value created this work.

Pi’s consensus algorithm, described above, creates a native trust layer that scales trust on the web without intermediaries. While the value of just one individual’s Security Circle is small, the aggregate of our individual security circles build a global “trust graph” that help people understand who on the Pi Network can be trusted. The Pi Network’s global trust graph will facilitate transactions between strangers that would not have otherwise been possible. Pi’s native currency, in turn, allows everyone who contributes to the security of the network to capture a share of the value they have helped create.

Pi’s Attention Marketplace – Bartering Unutilized Attention And Time

Pi allows its members to pool their collective attention to create an attention market much more valuable than any individual’s attention alone. The first application built on this layer will be a scarce social media channel currently hosted on the home screen of the application. You can think of the scarce social media channel as Instagram with one global post at a time. Pioneers can wager Pi to engage the attention of other members of the network, by sharing content (e.g., text, images, videos) or asking questions that seek to tap into the collective wisdom of the community. On the Pi Network, everyone has the opportunity to be an influencer or to tap into the wisdom of the crowd. To date, Pi’s Core Team has been using this channel to poll the community’s opinion on design choices for Pi (e.g. the community voted on the design and colors of the Pi logo.) We have received many valuable responses and feedback from the community on the project. One possible future direction is to open the attention market for any Pioneer to use Pi to post their content, while expanding the number of channels hosted on the Pi Network.

In addition to bartering attention with their peers, Pioneers may also opt into bartering with companies that are seeking their attention. The average American sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day. Companies fight for our attention and pay tremendous amounts of money for it. But we, the customers, receive no value from these transactions. In Pi’s attention marketplace, companies seeking to reach Pioneers will have to compensate their audience in Pi. Pi’s advertising marketplace will be strictly opt-in only and will provide an opportunity for Pioneers to monetize one of their greatest untapped resources: their attention.

Pi’s Barter Marketplace – Build Your Personal Virtual Storefront

In addition to contributing trust and attention to the Pi Network, we expect Pioneers to be able to contribute their unique skills and services in the future. Pi’s mobile application will also serve as a Point of Sales where Pi’s members can offer their untapped goods and services via a “virtual storefront” to other members of the Pi Network. For example, a member offer up an underutilized room in their apartment for rent to other members on the Pi Network. In addition to real assets, members of the Pi Network will also be able to offer skills and services via their virtual storefronts. For example, a member of the Pi Network could offer their programming or design skills on the Pi marketplace. Overtime, the value of Pi will be supported by a growing basket of goods and services.

Pi’s Decentralized App Store – Lowering The Barrier Of Entry For Creators

The Pi Network’s shared currency, trust graph, and marketplace will be the soil for a broader ecosystem of decentralized applications. Today, anyone that wants to start an application needs to bootstrap its technical infrastructure and community from scratch. Pi’s decentralized applications store will allow Dapp developers to leverage Pi’s existing infrastructure as well as the shared resources of the community and users. Entrepreneurs and developers can propose new Dapps to the community with requests for access to the network’s shared resources. Pi will also build its Dapps with some degree of interoperability so that Dapps are able to reference data, assets, and processes in other decentralized applications.


Governance – Cryptocurrency for and by the people

Challenges w/ 1st Generation Governance models

Trust is the foundation of any successful monetary system. One of the most important factors engendering trust is governance, or the process by which changes are implemented to the protocol over time. Despite its importance, governance is often one of the most overlooked aspects of cryptoeconomic systems.

First generation networks such as Bitcoin largely avoided formal (or “on-chain”) governance mechanisms in favor of informal (or “off-chain”) mechanisms arising from a combination of role and incentive design. By most measures, Bitcoin’s governance mechanisms has been quite successful, allowing the protocol to grow dramatically in scale and value since its inception. However, there have also been some challenges. The economic concentration of Bitcoin has led to a concentration of political power. The result is that everyday people can get caught in the middle of destructive battles between massive holders of Bitcoin. One of the most recent examples of this challenge has been the ongoing battle between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. These civil wars can end in a fork where or where the blockchain. For token holders, hard forks are inflationary and can threaten the value of their holdings.

Pi’s Governance Model – a two-phase plan

In an article challenging the merits of on-chain governance, Vlad Zamfir, one of Ethereum’s core developers, argues that blockchain governance “is not an abstract design problem. It’s an applied social problem.” One of Vlad’s key points is that it is very difficult to design governance systems “a priori” or before observations of the particular challenges arising from a specific political system. One historical example is in the founding of the United States. The first experiment with democracy in the United States, the Articles of Confederation, failed after an eight-year experiment. The Founding Fathers of the United States were then able to draw upon the lessons of the Article of Confederation to craft the the Constitution – a much more successful experiment.

To build an enduring governance model, Pi will pursue a two-phase plan.

Provisional Governance Model (< 5M members)

Until the network hits a critical mass of 5M members, Pi will operate under a provisional governance model. This model will most closely resemble “off-chain” governance models currently employed by protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum, with Pi’s Core Team playing an important role in guiding the development of the protocol. However,, Pi’s Core Team will still rely heavily on the input of the community. The Pi mobile application itself is where Pi’s core team has been soliciting community input and engaging with Pioneers. Pi embraces community critiques and suggestions, which is implemented by the open-for-comments features of Pi’s landing page, FAQs and white paper. Whenever people browse these materials on Pi’s websites, they can submit comment on a specific section right there to ask for questions and make suggestions. Offline Pioneer meetups that Pi’s core team have been organizing will also be an important channel for community input.

Additionally, Pi’s Core Team will develop more formal governance mechanics. One potential governance system is liquid democracy. In liquid democracy, every Pioneer will have the ability to either vote on an issue directly or to delegate their vote to another member of the network. Liquid democracy would allow for both broad and efficient membership from Pi’s community.

Pi’s “Constitutional Convention” (> 5M members)

Upon hitting 5M members, a provisional committee will be formed based on previous contributions to the Pi Network. This committee will be responsible for soliciting and proposing suggestions from and to the wider community. It will also organize a series of on- and offline conversations where Pi’s members will be able to weigh on Pi’s long-term constitution. Given Pi’s global user base, the Pi Network will conduct these conventions at multiple locations across the world to ensure accessibility. In addition to hosting in-person conventions, Pi will also use its mobile application as a platform for allowing Pi’s member to participate in the process remotely. Whether in-person or online, Pi’s community members will have the ability to participate in the crafting Pi’s long-term governance structure.


Roadmap / Deployment plan

Phase 1 – Design, Distribution, Trust Graph Bootstrap.

The Pi server is operating as a faucet emulating the behavior of the decentralized system as it will function once its live. During this phase improvements in the user experience and behavior are possible and relatively easy to make compared to the stable phase of the main net. All minting of coins to users will be migrated to the live net once it launches. In other words, the livenet will pre-mint  in its genesis block all account holder balances generated during Phase 1, and continue operating just like the current system but fully decentralized. Pi is not listed on exchanges during this phase and it is impossible to “buy” Pi with any other currency.

Phase 2 – Testnet

Before we launch the main net, the Node software will be deployed on a test net. The test net will use the same exact trust graph as the main net but on a testing Pi coin. Pi core team will host several nodes on the test net, but will encourage more Pioneers to start their own nodes on the testnet. In fact, in order for any node to join the main net, they are advised to begin on the testnet. The test net will be run in parallel to the Pi emulator in phase one, and periodically, e.g. daily, the results from both systems will be compared to catch the gaps and misses of the test net, which will allow Pi developers to propose and implement fixes.  After a thorough concurrent run of both systems, testnet will reach a state where its results consistently match the emulator’s. At that time when the community feels its ready, Pi will migrate to the next phase.

Phase 3 – Mainnet

When the community feels the software is ready for production, and it has been thoroughly tested on the testnet, the official mainnet of the Pi network will be launched. An important detail is that, in the transition into the mainnet, only accounts validated to belong to distinct real individuals will be honored. After this point, the faucet and Pi network emulator of Phase 1 will be shut down and the system will continue on its own forever. Future updates to the protocol will be contributed by the Pi developer community and Pi’s core team, and will be proposed by the committee. Their implementation and deployment will depend on nodes updating the mining software just like any other blockchains. No central authority will be controlling the currency and it will be fully decentralized. Balances of fake users or duplicate users will be discarded. This is the phase when Pi can be connected to exchanges and be exchanged for other currencies.


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