Casper: The Future-Proof Blockchain

Okereke Innocent   |   

Nov 06, 2021

Nov 06, 2021

The Casper Network is a layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain that improves how businesses upgrade new services and products on the blockchain. Unlike other networks, it has peculiar features that make it unique. It's for these features that the Casper Network is becoming the best choice for programming and blockchain transmission.

One of these unique features includes its Highway protocol consensus. It's with this Highway protocol consensus that Casper blockchains can finalize the addition of new blocks to the chain. Aside from this, there are other unique features of the Casper Network. 

In this article, we extensively discuss the unique features of the Casper Network and how they aid blockchain transmission. Enjoy!

Casper Network: History, Protocol and CSPR Token 

The Casper Network is a permissionless blockchain network supported by the PoS consensus algorithm and WebAssembly (WASM). It was created to solve global blockchain challenges by effectively solving a trilemma:

  • Scalability
  • Provision of e enterprise-level security
  • Decentralization on a blockchain protocol

Before we fully delve into the benefits, here is a brief on how the Casper Network came into existence and its operations.

The History of Casper Network

In 2018, two people founded the Casper Network - Mrinal Manohar and Medha Parlikar. In its creation, the creators aimed to create a network that promotes DApps, blockchain technology, and smart contracts globally. Hence, based on the Casper CBC specification, they created the first real-time Proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.

Casper as a platform aims to continuously adapt to the needs of its users and developers from different spheres. Because of this, it is regarded as the gateway to a developed era for Web3 to match the increasing demand for connected services globally.

Highway Protocol 

The Highway protocol is a consensus protocol created with the Casper Network to attain a very high threshold required for finalizing blocks to be added to a blockchain. In essence, it enables quick agreement among validates for block addition on the Casper Network.

The Highway protocol is peculiar to the Casper Network giving it an edge over other networks. Asides from enabling quick agreement among validators, the Highway protocol allows for flexibility during the finalization of blocks. 

CSPR Token 

After completing on-chain transactions on Casper Network through Casper PoS consensus, network validators are rewarded with native cryptocurrencies. This reward is peculiar to the Casper Network system and is known as the CSPR token.

It was first introduced through the Coin list in a public sale. In the first supply, about 800million tokens were supplied but this was followed by a slight decrease in demand afterward. Although CSPR tokens were first sold on the Coin list, they're currently available on several crypto exchange platforms. 

Clean Energy Blockchain

According to research by the University of Cambridge, the bitcoin global consumption index is 0.6%. This is very high relative to other systems. In fact, Elon Musk announced a few months ago that it'll no longer accept bitcoin as a payment option. 

The reason for this high energy to power blockchains is due to the validation, computing, and securing activities of the blockchain network system. To solve this, the Casper blockchain has already incorporated a PoS, and a Highway protocol.

Unlike other platforms, the Casper blockchain network provides an environmentally-friendly blockchain network. Clearly, Casper produces clean energy blockchains.

Having known much about Casper Network, you must understand the benefits of this system. Below, we extensively discuss the benefits of the Casper Network.

The Benefits of the Casper Network 

As a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake blockchain system, Casper Network makes it easy to add new blocks. This especially is a major difficulty that other systems haven't been able to solve. Asides from this, there are other advantages of the Casper Network. 

Developer-Friendly Features 

Commonly, developers use block-chain programming languages for their services. A typical example of a blockchain programming language is Solidity. Solidity makes it easier for developers to code for different locks. 

Unlike Solidity, the Casper Network has an advanced programming language known as WebAssemly(WASM) and Rust. Both of these programming languages make coding easy for developers. With the Rust and WebAssemly(WASM), businesses can efficiently future-proof their organizations. 

Now, here is some good news, Casper has a transpiler that converts solidity codes into Rust. This tool, known as Caspiler, helps developers convert decentralized applications such as Ethereum onto the Casper Network. 

Upgradeable Smart Contracts

The Casper Network has a very distinct characteristic that supports the upgrade of smart contacts already on the on-chain. In fact, the smart contract rate on Casper is less costly and less complex than with other platforms. 

Besides this, during upgrades, the Casper system checks for vulnerabilities too. With this, smart contracts cannot be edited by anyone, not even by the original developers once deployed. With upgradeability, businesses can now offer resilient and adaptable block-chain products and services.

Lower Gas Costs

Another very intriguing benefit of the Casper Network is its capacity to moderate gas costs. During large volume transactions, gas volumes can get high and customers can get services at ridiculously high prices. But with the Casper Network, we reduce network congestion when competing with other Layer 1 blockchain projects.

Caper even has a future gas costs plan to help businesses prepare for the future. They hope to develop a predictive gas future to allow businesses to save gas ahead of time. With this, businesses better plan for the future.

Weighted Keys

Often, blockchains come with binary(on and off) smart contracts which is a disadvantage for large teams. Large teams manage complex systems and applications which the binary smart contract cannot accommodate. This becomes a challenge for large teams as they cannot effectively work together and manage these complex systems. 

To properly manage complex systems, the Casper Network has weighted keys that allow for multi-level system access permission. These weighted keys organize the security and quantity of businesses' assets. All of these above are the advantages of the Casper Network.

Casper's New Solution for Defi

Seeing the rapid changes that are occurring to the digital world and the cryptocurrency world, it's critical that their systems adapt to these changes too. One of these facets is the Defi system. Meanwhile, Casper is leading in the Defi revolution quite well. 

Unlike other blockchains, the Casper Network doesn't contain high security, energy, and decentralization costs. From this, it's clear the Casper Network is leading in the Defi revolution. 

Flexible Protocol

Casper Network incorporates a new consensus protocol known as the Highway protocol. The highway protocol allows the easy finalization of additional blocks to be added to the blockchain. To do this, the highway protocol presents varying thresholds for finalization. 

Energy Efficient and High Finality Defi

Unlike other blockchains that depend heavily on miners to achieve a consensus, the Casper Network introduces validators to achieve consensus. And Casper can only achieve this through its advanced PoS protocol. 

Deterministic Protocol

A major pitfall in Defi is its probabilistic network fees. Several people say the EIP 1559 makes the ethereum fee deterministic but not both. However, the Casper Network provides both a probabilistic and deterministic network pricing model.

User-Developer Friendly Platform

With the Casper protocol, Developers can choose either a private or public and set their permission levels and privacy. In a way, this is paving the way for mass adoption for developers. 

The Casper Network features a WebAssembly for developers to create a user-friendly platform. Also, it features an SDK that offers developers the flexibility of deployment without learning new languages.

Upgradeable Smart Contract 

The Casper Network can upgrade smart contracts on-chain directly without technical difficulties. This is due to its advanced protocol design and governance procedures.

Sharding Layer 1 Solution

Commonly, users opt-in for Layer 2 solutions to base blockchains for scalability sales. However, this comprises security and decentralization. To solve this, Casper has Sharded Layer 1 configuration. 

How Casper Works

Casper functions basically by validating transactions with group validators then continuing with the network. This is quite different from other validation mechanisms like the Proof-of-Work network. For economical reasons, the Proof-of-Work networks centralized validators. However, Casper presents better options like decentralized dependence on validators.

Also, Casper presents stacked tokens that enhance the verification of transactions with validators. In the same way, they're able to receive CSPR rewards because of their PoS consensus protocol. Finally, just like other networks, the Casper Network has tokens for their transactions too.

The Mechanism of How The Casper Network Communicates

There exist networks of nodes that make it easier for peers to reach a consensus on a blockchain. But these nodes are not physical machines. Just like every digital machine, nodes some to network traffic, by presenting ID and addresses.

The Identity 

Since Casper ensures the effective security of data it must have high-quality security measures. To do this, Casper registered the fingerprint of members of a blockchain which serves as their identity. 

It's worthy of mention that each node has distinct identity features. Each of these features is generated once a new node is activated.

A typical node has an IP and a pair of ports that successfully access the nodes. Also, importantly, a node has an address.

Internodal Connections

Internodal connections refer to the connections that exist between nodes. Before a node successfully creates a connection between nodes it opens a TLS connection that ends on the receiving node.

The node that generates the TLS connection is often referred to as the Client node. On the other hand, the node that receives the TLS connection is the server node. This is important during connection creation as the client node must verify with the client node before generating any signal.

To further explain, TLS connections must contain the same digest and password to prevent connection attacks. The activity of the connection created is dependent on the route of the connection. Connections can be one way or two ways. If one way, connects reconnects with the server but if two ways, the entire connection is discarded. Two ways connections are used to send one-way messages.

Network 

It takes at least two nodes to establish a network. Before connecting to a node, the client node will attempt connecting with another node to form a full connection network. The essence of forming a connection is for efficient data transmission. 

There are two types of data transmission: 

Broadcast 

A broadcast allows you to transmit messages once without any accuracy that every node connected will receive the message.

Gossip

Just as you'll expect, gossip is just the distribution of value through a network without directly sending it to each node. It means that only some part nodes connect to the server before the distribution occurs. Some examples of values being gossiped about are endpoints, implementations, and blocks. 

It's very critical to note that only consensus messages sent by validators are broadcast. Anything outside of this is gossip.

Node Discovery 

When nodes constantly talk about their addresses, it can lead to node discovery. After gossip, each node ensures to establish a connection and records the endpoint. Failure to achieve this is node discovery.

To Wrap It Up 

The Casper Network has so much to offer to the digital world. Most especially, in the world of blockchains and developers. With Casper, developers can easily code using Rust or WebAssemly(WASM) programming languages present on Casper. 

The Casper Network does not only advance the world of developers, it advances other worlds too. In this article, we discuss the benefits and advancements that the Casper Network presents to the present and the future. 

Also read Iron Fish: The Private Cryptocurrency

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