Currently, one of the biggest challenges faced by blockchain technology is scalability. The architecture of blockchain is quite important to overcome the challenge and sidechain is a good solution.
Developers can use sidechains to deploy blockchain solutions with the low cost and high security. Sidechain is also called childchain.
What is sidechain?
Sidechain is a relatively independent blockchain, pegged to one node of the main chain. It can transfer digital assets between different chains. Sidechain functionality holds tremendous potential to enhance the capabilities of existing blockchains.
We can imagine the main chain as a highway. Sidechains are a series of roads adjacent to the highway, and they can be connected to the highway.
Therefore, a sidechain can be simply understood as a discrete blockchain that is connected to the mainnet by two-way peg. Sidechain technology extends the application of blockchain technology with low cost.
How does sidechain work?
The rate at which digital assets are exchanged between the main chain and the side chain is usually pre-set. Two-way peg makes assets transferred directly between different blockchains.
To better explain two-way peg, I take USC, the first sidechain on Ulord as an example. On Ulord, when the user intends to exchange UT to SUT (UT on the sidechain), part of UT is locked on the Ulord public blockchain, while the same amount of SUT is released on USC. When SUT needs to be exchanged back to UT, SUT is locked again on USC, while the same amount of UT is released on the Ulord public blockchain. Through the secure protocol, the same amount UT will not be released on the two chains.
Security
Sidechain has a big advantage. It is independent and responsible for its own safety. Therefore, the security problems that appear on the sidechain will not affect the mainchain. Similarly, if a security problem occurs on the mainnet, the sidechain will not be affected, although the effect of two way peg has been greatly reduced.
Sidechains can have their own miners. Miners can get reward by joint mining. As long as the algorithms of the two cryptos are the same, the miners can dig these two cryptos at the same time. The sidechain can perform SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) on the block header of the main chain and finds the mark, so the association between the main chain and the sidechain is uniquely established, which can ensure the block security of the sidechain.
Advantages
Sidechain has two major advantages.
First, developers can choose sidechains based on their project, or even build a new sidechain.
Second, because of two way peg, the assets between sidechain and mainchain can be transferred without cost, which is very convenient to uses and developers.
Ulord with Its Two Sidechains
In addition to the above advantages of sidechain, Ulord has two sidechains: USC and UOS. Maybe it can win in the fierce competition of the public chain.
1. Easy deployment of smart contract
Ulord has two sidechains. The first is USC, launched on October 15, 2018. USC supports smart contracts on ETH. Because the USC Smart Contract is written in Solidity, USCVM is fully compatible with the Ethereum VM. Smart contracts running on ETH can be easily grafted onto USC.
The second sidechain UOS was officially launched on February 26, 2019. UOS supports smart contracts on EOS, and developers can easily deploy DAPP on it.
From this point, Ulord is very friendly to the current smart contracts, and developers can migrate DApps to the Ulord sidechain with little cost. This compatibility of Ulord is highly improved, which provides a lower threshold for the DAPP development.
2. The transaction speed is greatly improved
The USC network generates a block every 18 seconds. Considering the node SSD storage technology, the USC network can bear 2000 transactions per second (simple payment transactions).
On UOS, the peak of TPS is 4302, which means it can handle 4,302 transactions per second. It is very meaningful to the scalability and the transaction speed of the Ulord mainnet.
These are the obvious features of Ulord with its two sidechains. Welcome more developers to the Ulord Developer Community (https://ulorder.one) to use the two sidechains and build the Ulord ecosystem.
