What is Nockchain?
Digital infrastructure for programmable money.
Motivation
Nockchain is a L1 blockchain built for scalable, lightweight zero-knowledge proofs: digital infrastructure for programmable money. It serves as a secure interoperable foundation for all digital assets. Nockchain combines the classic incentives of digital gold with modern research into Zero-Knowledge Proofs to set money free.
Nockchain achieves these through the original cypherpunk Proof-of-Work incentives, making use of modern research into Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), data availability, and scalability. Zero-Knowledge Proof of Work (ZKPoW) creates the consensus conditions for participants in Nockchain: they must agree on the protocol, the sequencing of time, etc., and in exchange they can permissionlessly develop, mine, and operate using $NOCK and sovereign consensus applications.
Key Features
Nockchain builds on a uniquely solid footing:
Useful proof of work. Useful Proof of Work
Full programmability. Full Programmability
Computational efficiency and security. Efficiency and Security
Consensus apps and zero-knowledge proofs. What is Nockchain?
This interview with Zorp founder Logan Allen discusses Nockchain's ZKPoW incentives:
Useful Proof of Work
Nockchain's useful proof of work protocol replaces the waste energy of Nakamoto consensus with proof generation. Nockchain's computation and architecture thus yields a high-throughput note-based and intent-based transaction system. Notes are individual transactions including temporary data storage, and intents are commitments based on chain state.
Proof-of-work incentives invite many decentralized participants rather than the few large actors of proof-of-stake. Onchain execution is minimal, leading to a readily scalable chain.
Light clients are enabled by consistency guarantees over the state of the chain. For instance, the wallet can use a snapshot rather than the entire chain history and maintain a reliable picture of the consensus state of the chain. This means that apps built on Nockchain can run without requiring gigabytes of local storage.
Full Programmability
Nockchain is fully programmable, enabling developers to build applications of all kinds using intents and the NockApp framework. NockApp applications gain native access to the Nockchain state and namespace, including onchain data storage. Nor is there any lurking blowup in cost due to gas or onchain execution: only the proof of computation is posted.
Bitcoin, by design, is not Turing complete and provides only a limited scripting language. Most cryptocurrencies since Bitcoin have oriented toward being pre-mined proof-of-stake general-purpose application layers in an attempt to address these issues. But moving away from the PoW strategy warps incentives and centralizes blockchains. Nockchain efficiently unites general-purpose computing with PoW incentives.
Efficiency and Security
Heavyweight computation takes place offchain and only the proof needs to be posted. Applications that integrate with Nockchain will deliver unprecedented security compared with classic blockchains. Applications inherit the mathematical guarantees of zero-knowledge proofs combined with proof-of-work consensus. Nockchain affords censorship-resistant need-to-know security.
Zero-knowledge proofs expose only the information deemed necessary to complete a transaction, so you have finer control over privacy than the pseudonymity of other chains. Users transact and prove facts to other users without revealing unnecessary details about themselves or what is being proven.
Sovereign Applications and ZK Proofs
Sovereign applications built using the NockApp framework interact with the chain. The Turing-complete Nock ISA enables full programmability. ZKPs and mathematical verification mean that you can trust that the code you wrote is the code that runs.
What is NockApp?Last updated