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Blockchain LabVENTURE STUDIO

whitepaperConsensus2018

Chainweb: A Proof-of-Work Parallel-Chain Architecture for Massive Throughput

Kadena. Will Martino, Monica Quaintance, Stuart Popejoy.

Kadena's public parallel-chain design. Many proof-of-work chains advance together, and each block commits to peer-chain headers, so a confirmation is a braid rather than a single chain. This is not the 2016 private-chain note already in the historic library.

The historic library already includes Kadena's 2016 private-chain consensus note. Chainweb is the later public design.

The problem the paper names

One proof-of-work chain confirms slowly if you wait for depth, and it does not get more throughput by adding miners — it gets more energy per block. Chainweb's proposal is to run many chains and braid them so that depth on the braid is what a recipient waits for.

What the design proposes

  • A fixed graph of chains. Each new block includes hashes of peer blocks.
  • Reorg resistance is argued on the braid, because changing one chain requires changing its peers.
  • Throughput is intended to scale with the number of chains, under the paper's assumptions.

How the mechanism is specified

  • Miners may work on different chains. The braiding is what stops the system becoming twenty unrelated ledgers.
  • Cross-chain transfers have to be defined on top of the peer references. They are not free.
  • Pact, Kadena's contract language, is a related document, not this consensus paper.

What this page does not treat as proven

  • The historic PDF Kadena-ConsensusWhitePaper-Aug2016.pdf is the earlier private-chain note. Do not mix the citations.
  • The paper's scaling picture is not a live benchmark.
  • A fixed chain graph is a parameter. Changing it is a migration, which the paper does not do for you.

Why a venture studio still reads it

Parallel chains are easy to draw and hard to braid. Chainweb is the reference we point at when a pitch says 'twenty chains' and has not said what each block commits to besides its own parent.

This is Blockchain Lab's reading of a public design paper. It is not the paper, not a copy of it, and not an offer of tokens, equity, custody or a partnership. Later network behaviour can diverge from the text. Nothing here is investment, legal or technical advice.