Concordium: A proof-of-stake Blockchain designed with business applications in mind

Concordium is a proof-of-stake decentralized blockchain based on science and designed with business applications in mind. It’s the first blockchain with built-in identification to satisfy regulatory requirements while also providing a user-friendly platform that can manage smart contracts. Here’s a deep dive into this exciting blockchain project.

Team Background

Concordium was conceived in 2018 by Lars Seier Christensen, to add an ID layer at the protocol layer to create an open-source permissionless blockchain that is genuinely beneficial to the business. 

Seier, who created the Danish investment bank Saxo in 1992, was well aware of the benefits of blockchain technology, such as immutable data that promotes confidence and protection. Still, he also recognized that most companies cannot function on anonymity and must identify users for practical and regulatory purposes.

Concordium has been developed by the Concordium Foundation, which is led by Seier and includes Professor Ueli Maurer, a well-known name in the field of cryptography, attorney Simone Monnerat, a specialist in Swiss foundation law, and governance, and Bjorn Krog Andersen, the Head of Legal for Banking Circle. Lone Fonss Schroder, the CEO, is also the co-founder of the bank-fintech firm Cash works, as well as the Vice-Chairman of Volvo Cars and a Director at IKEA leads the operations and Torben Pryds Pedersen, the founder of the Pedersen Commitment cryptographic primitive, is in charge of the tech sector of Concordium.

Hans-Ole Jochumsen, a former Vice-chair of NASDAQ; Michael Jackson, a former COO of Skype; and ETH Zurich professors Professor Hans Gersbach and Professor Roger Wattenhofer are among the advisory team of the project. Professor Ivan Daamgrd, perhaps one of the most well-known names in the blockchain industry, leads Concordium’s Science team.

Why choose Concordium?

There are many reasons why Concordium stands out:

1. Fast and safe finality

On the Concordium Platform, transactions are finalized and immutable without the need for subsequent forms. Its unique two-layer consensus ensures that speed does not come at the expense of protection and vice versa.

To ensure resource-efficient network service, the Concordium Platform employs a proof of stake (PoS) protocol. The two-layer consensus approach, which combines a Nakamoto-style consensus (NSC) blockchain with a novel finalization method to provide quick finality, is a significant advancement of the platform’s consensus framework.

The reasoning for this approach is that NSC allows blocks to be added easily, but there is a chance that a block will be rolled back. This risk gradually decreases as more blocks are added to the chain, but Concordium finalization allows it to be removed shortly after the block is added.

2. Identity Layer

Concordium’s novel Identity Layer at the protocol level provides transactional protection while also allowing relevant regulators to be held accountable. Each Concordium account can be linked to a natural person or organization, and this is the crucial function of the Concordium blockchain. Any Concordium account requires an Identity Object provided by a known third party – an ID Issuer following an ID Verification by a trusted organization.

3. Confidential Transactions

Concordium allows for encrypted transfers using a zero-knowledge evidence mechanism, which allows both parties to verify transactions without specifying the amount being transferred.

4. Consistent Transaction Fees

Concordium Blockchain offers low transaction fees in Euro that are stable and predictable for business applications.

5. Energy-saving Proof of Stake

The Proof of Stake ( PoS ) mechanism assures a green and resource-efficient process and increased participant safety. GTU holders have the choice of running their node or delegating their GTU to a baker. The more significant the stake, the more difficult it is for malicious parties to influence most of the stake.

Technology Architecture

Concordium’s technology architecture can be considered multi-layered and complex.

1. Identity primitives at the protocol stage

• Concordium’s permissionless public blockchain allows companies to control counterparty risk and comply with regulations. 
• The identity of a consumer, whether a person or a company, is securely stored off-chain and kept private. It may be disclosed to authorities through existing legal channels in response to a court order. 
• Users on the Concordium platform can choose to keep transactions private while also maintaining ID accountability.

2. Two Layers Consensus

For quick, stable, and reliable transactions, the Concordium 2-Layer Consensus Mechanism combines a Nakamoto-style Blockchain with an advanced Finalization (Finalization as a Service). Even in the face of adversity, the Two Layer Consensus protocol guarantees quick and stable finality.

3. Scale by Sharding

Concordium Sharding is based on a highly efficient Control Chain and a rapid Finalization layer, ensuring that the supply of capacity in the Concordium Blockchain still exceeds demand with high reliability. Additional shards are automatically started as traffic grows. This prevents transaction pricing from being influenced by a lack of capacity.

4. Interoperable

Concordium is working on a new interoperability architecture that will enable it to send short verified messages to the other entities without requiring the recipient to use the Concordium Platform.

Tokenomics

The GTU token has been launched by Concordium to power its blockchain. The GTU (Global Transaction Unit) is a payment token developed by leading macroeconomists and currency-protocol-savvy professionals. Its tokenomics model represents a central goal to expand the ecosystem into a self-sustaining model. 

Concordium has one of the most fascinating token distribution plans in the space, with more than 70% of tokens going to developers and enterprise partners working on the ecosystem.

The recently minted GTU will be used for 

• Baker and finalizer incentives and a 10% Platform Development Charge to the Concordium Foundation to ensure the blockchain’s continued development and promotion.
• Transaction fees would be constant in comparison to the Euro, allowing companies to schedule their operating costs.

Following the launch, a staking scheme to reward GTU holdings will be introduced.

Funding and Investment

Concordium blockchain finished the fourth private placement round of the cryptocurrency GTU on April 25th and the strategic sale on May 15th, reaching USD 40 million in the first five months of 2021. With this, the company has secured additional funding for the company’s new open-source blockchain’s further growth, decentralization, and listing.

Latest Developments

Concordium’s blockchain code has just gone public, allowing developers to build applications on the platform. Concordium has raised $40 million in private and strategic sales so far in 2021. Concordium recently announced a joint venture with Geely Holding Group, a global Fortune 500 firm, to provide blockchain technology and services in China by Concordium’s technology.

Concordium has launched four testnets in the last year, with the most recent testnet issuing 2,300 identities and creating 7,000+ accounts. In addition, there have been over 1,000 active nodes, 800 bakers, and over 3,600 wallet downloads in Concordium. Concordium is the first corporate blockchain to join the Fintech Association of Japan, which has some of the most advanced Blockchain and crypto regulations globally.

Future Roadmap

The company is excited to announce that Mainnet and MVP will go live in June, allowing users to write Smart Contracts in Rust, submit private and encrypted transactions, and build identities, among many other features. MVP also provides a desktop wallet with Ledger keys, a mobile wallet, and key features such as a 2-layer consensus protocol and fully functional anonymity recovery to meet regulatory requirements.

Smart Contract models will be created in Q1 2022, with other properties like structured tokens and swapping mechanisms, Oracle’s node infrastructure, delegation mechanism to pool, ID libraries, Custodian wallets integration, and more. Interoperability FaaS and outgoing messages, Private shards, State Proofs, Consensus sharding, and other features are also in the works.

When it comes to community building, the Concordium Blockchain uses an organic approach. They’ve had the fantastic opportunity to interact with approximately 60,000 community members from worldwide who share their vision and principles, which are to provide a compliant-by-design layer 1 solution dedicated to the business world used from day one.

Concordium has a natural and robust partnership with the RustLang Foundation and the RustLang Ecosystem builders, as Concordium’s DevX initiative has shown. The DevX initiative is an ad hoc project that enables and empowers RustLang programmers from a completely agnostic standpoint.

To know more about Concordium, click here.