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by Kadeem Clarke

From Elrond to MultiversX: A Game-Changer in Decentralized Ecosystems

MultiversX is leading the way with its Adaptive State Sharding, Secure PoS, and near-instant transaction throughput.

Discover its architecture, EGLD token, ecosystem, and upcoming innovations – perfect for DeFi apps and beyond! 👇️ 

1️⃣ Introduction to MultiversX

In November 2022, Elrond, a startup working on internet-scale blockchain technology, transformed itself into MultiversX, which is one of the rapidly growing and evolving blockchain technologies in today’s decentralized ecosystem.

MultiversX aims to create a blockchain that is both fast and scalable, making it suitable for finance, business, and other applications.

Its adaptive state fragmentation system enables transactions to be processed quickly by multiple validators.

• Compared to Bitcoin, which can only process seven transactions per second, MultiversX claims to process 30,000 transactions per second at a cost of $0.001 each, with near-instant completion.
• As demand grows, it promises to scale up to hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.
• MultiversX’s key feature is its near-instantaneous transaction throughput and linear scaling in tandem with demand.
• Recent results of a public testnet with community nodes indicate that MultiversX can process up to 250,000 transactions per second thanks to its Adaptive State Sharding technology

MultiversX has positioned itself as an excellent choice for developers working on decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and other decentralized applications due to its speed and scalability.

2️⃣ History of Elrond/MultiversX

Developers have long sought scalability solutions for blockchain networks. MultiversX was designed as a scalability solution, employing the following:

• A proprietary Adaptive State Sharding technology
• PoS consensus mechanism

These features make MultiversX both secure and linearly scalable.

The core team comprises 120 highly credible individuals, including:

• 45 software engineers and researchers
• Remaining team members in various administrative and technical roles

Three co-founders lead the team: Beniamin Mincu, Lucian Mincu, and Lucian Todea, all of whom have excelled in blockchain/fintech.

MultiversX officially launched its mainnet on July 30th, 2020, after 2.5 years of development and funding from over $5 million in investors. So far, it has lived up to its promise of a permissionless, borderless, and open blockchain system and promises even more future innovations.

In November 2022, MultiversX rebranded from Elrond and expanded its scale and scope to include the transformative metaverse market as well”.

3️⃣ How does MultiversX work?

MultiversX aims to build a secure, high-throughput, decentralized, scalable blockchain network.

To achieve this, they make use of a host of unique technologies:

• Adaptive State Sharding
• Secure Proof-of-Stake (SPoS) system
• Elrond’s Virtual Machine or Integrated Development Environment

Sharding, also known as fragmentation, is a technique that divides data into smaller pieces and distributes them across multiple networks or blockchains, each of which contains some nodes that process transactions.

This connector is not unique to MultiversX; other projects like Zilliqa and Ethereum 2.0 use similar techniques. MultiversX differs in that it implements three types of sharding – state, transaction, and network – and employs parallel processing to speed up transaction times and handle more at once.

A) Adaptive State Sharding

Sharding is a technique that divides networks into shards, allowing nodes to process only a portion of the network’s transactions. MultiversX’s technique, adaptive state sharding, is a sharding technique that combines the three types of sharding to maximize capacity. The three types of sharding are as follows:

• Network sharding— a sharding process of grouping nodes into shards to optimize communication and send messages faster.
• Transaction sharding— this is done by sectioning transactions based on specific criteria and processing those transactions in parallel to other shards.
• State sharding— this is done by dividing the blockchain history into different sections of the network and maintaining a portion of the state in each shard.
• Adaptive state sharding – it merges these three techniques into a unique solution that makes parallel processing possible, improves shard communication, and increases the blockchain’s performance. It also allows transactions to be tracked, maintains stability, increases throughput and reduces fees without reducing overall functionality.

B) Secure Proof-of-Stake (SPoS) System

Secure Proof-of-Stake is an advanced version of the original Proof-of-Stake mechanism that connects all sharded nodes in the network.

C) Virtual Machine or Integrated Development Environment

The MultiversX Virtual Machine is based on WebAssembly and provides support for writing Smart Contracts in Rust. It is one of the fastest in the blockchain space with ~4000 swaps per second pure VM performance

4️⃣ MultiversX : Speed Comparison

As mentioned above, the consensus mechanism that MultiversX uses – SPoS, was developed to improve existing Proof of Stake solutions.

• Randomness is provided through the added signature of the last block. MultiversX team estimates that this reduces the time needed to choose a consensus group to less than 100ms..

As a more sophisticated version of Proof of Stake, SPoS aims to ensure that the distribution of shards is fair and is a compromise between increased computational and energy demands and security.

Network throughput measured in transactions per second with a global network speed of 8 MB/s:

5️⃣ Architecture of MultiversX

• Validators: MultiversX network nodes process transactions and secure the network by participating in the consensus mechanism in exchange for protocol and transaction fees. To join the MultiversX network, a validator must put up collateral in EGLD tokens, which are staked to align validators’ incentives with network goals. Validators risk losing their stake if they conspire to disrupt the network.

• Observers: These passive network members can be read and relay interfaces. They can be “Full,” which means they preserve the entire history of the blockchain, or “Light,” which only holds two epochs of the blockchain’s history. Observers are not required to stake EGLD tokens to join the network and are not compensated for their participation.

• Fisherman: After a proposed block, this node verifies its validity. They challenge invalid blocks caused by malicious actors’ adversity and are rewarded for their efforts. Validators who are not part of the current consensus round or observers can fill the role of Fisherman.

• No-Code Approach: Using MultiversX’s infrastructure, building scalable decentralized applications for implemented fungible and non-fungible tokens is becoming more efficient. Instead of assembling a team of developers, one-mint users can easily deploy their NFT collection with a few clicks.

6️⃣ What Makes MultiversX Unique?

According to its economic paper, it intends to develop its ecosystem and establish EGLD as a store of value.

The network is divided into four shards: three execution shards capable of 5,400 transactions per second each, and one coordination shard, the “Metachain.” MultiversX’s adaptive state-sharding architecture completely disregards the state, transactions, and network.

• When the throughput demand is unmet, it can scale by adding shards. It was tested in a public environment to run 263,000 TPS with 1,500 nodes from 29 countries organized into 50 shards.

• To encourage adoption, the project also offers royalties of 30% of smart contract fees to developers who build on the platform.

7️⃣ The EGLD Token

MultiversX’s native token is Electronic Gold (eGold), which trades under the symbol EGLD.

EGLD facilitates the operation of the MultiversX network and is used for platform governance systems, staking, rewards, and transaction and smart contract payment.

EGLD derives its value from the MultiversX network’s functionality. The intrinsic value of a token is determined by its unique technology, scalability, offering of enterprise-grade solutions, and other use cases.

The live MultiversX price at the time of writing is $43, with a 24-hour trading volume of $47M. The current CoinGecko ranking is #50, with a live market cap of around $1.1B. It has a circulating supply of 25,131,476 EGLD coins and a max. supply of 31,415,926 EGLD coins.

It is distributed as follows:

• Launchpad sale: 25%
• Private token sale: 19%
• Team: 19%
• Reserve token: 17%
• Marketing: 8.5%
• Ecosystem Rewards: 7%
• Advisors: 2.5%
• Community: 2%
• Over ten years, new EGLD coins would be released till they reached the maximum supply.

8️⃣ The MultiversX ecosystem

Utrust and Elrond have evolved into xMoney and MultiversX and have expanded in ambition, scope, and potential.

Elrond Network’s work has expanded to:

• xExchange: The first to change, Maiar Exchange became xExchange, expanding the utility and bringing a solid value accrual mechanism that aligns exchange usage & growth trajectory.

• xSpotlight: Next came xSpotlight, formerly known as Inspire Art, an influential center for creativity and human expression that will light every corner of every universe.

• xExplorer: xExplorer is next in line. Formerly known as the Elrond Explorer, this is the most valuable tool for knowing how the network behaves and getting all the data transparently and reliably straight from the blockchain.

• MultiversX Wallet: The Elrond Wallet, one of the premiere non-custodial wallets in the market, will allow you to be your bank not just here but in all universes.

• MultiversX Bridges: The Ad Astra Bridge was a magnificent achievement. It seamlessly allowed the direct transfer of money from one blockchain to another, with meager costs and incredible speed. Now, MultiversX intends to grow on that promise.

• xLaunchpad: The final form of Maiar Launchpad, where all the power of Elrond’s technology was put at the service of ambitious founders and developers to get their ideas off the ground.

• xMoney: Money, redefined

Utrust and Twispay will cease to exist as brands, and the MultiversX team will come out of the process with a much grander purpose: not just to promote the adoption of crypto, the Internet-native money, but to be the final destination for all its user’s financial needs.

Whether dealing with payments or transfers, remittances or savings, investments, or DeFi, MultiversX will have the solution for you. MultiversX offers solutions whether you seek to use crypto or fiat, a mixture of both, or whatever suits your needs.

9️⃣ Upcoming Innovations on MultiversX

According to MultiversX’s plans, some fantastic features are on the way, here are some of them:

• xPortal (live): The portal to the Multiverse

This is where your digital identity will live. An avatar that lives beyond any single closed environment, accessible to anyone anywhere. With an overarching social life, xPortal will include chat, friends, your NFTs, and much more.This will also be the app from where you can run your financial affairs. It will consist of a crypto wallet, a debit card, and many more.

• xFabric (April 26th, 2023): The building blocks of everything.

This is a sovereign blockchain module and the core blockchain application that every user and company can use to create whatever they want.It will be deployable in minutes, fully customizable, and include an ambitious set of features and use cases for any creative, brand, or company.

• xWorlds (March 29th, 2023): MultiversX’s new universe and yours.

So far, all versions of the metaverse have not corresponded to the great collective vision of humankind. Not only will MultiversX develop a vision of a new universe and open it to everyone else to do the same. MultiversX is not creating a single metaverse; it is creating a multiverse.

🔟 Conclusion

MultiversX combines Adaptive State Sharding and a Secure Proof-of-Stake system to produce faster transactions, scalability, decentralization, and security for Layer 1 blockchain systems.

They hope to be the future of the new internet by offering DApp development and deployment for public and enterprise-grade use as the project evolves.

The secure Proof of Stake consensus mechanism is different from the well-known Proof of Stake model. The blockchain’s highly decentralized nature dictates the differences.

So far, it is the only company well-positioned in blockchain technology and can use it to create a single blockchain metaverse.