Emercoin – infrastructure services on the blockchain

A boring introduction to the ideology, technology and package of non-monetary services of the Emer blockchain from the co-founder of the project. Emercoin is one of the early projects to create a full-fledged ecosystem of network services on the blockchain. It was founded in 2013, before the era of ICOs and smart contracts. This article was written by one of the founders and developers of the project – Oleg Khovaiko, CTO of Emercoin. It [almost] completely preserves the expression and originality of the author's text. Token! ICO! Mine! Farm! DAO! STO! IEO! Hype! Tuzemun! Piastres, piastres, piastres! Freebie, freebie, freebie! Familiar? Tired? If still not – stop reading this boring and boring text, continue to intensively and confidently cast the above spells, as well as buy tokens (this is important, magic does not work without buying tokens). And you will be fabulously rich! For you obviously know better than anyone how to extract money from a speculative market in which no value is produced. Technologies instead of tokens We will go the other way! (IN AND. Lenin) We, the developers of Emercoin, initially understood that we were far from the geniuses of crypto trading and bold financial transactions. And initially we decided to develop a blockchain platform and services for practical use – both in business and by individuals. And we made a platform that works. That is, he does what is necessary, and most importantly, he does not do what is not necessary. During development, we deliberately abandoned smart contracts, which we consider an unrecoverable vulnerability in the security of the system. As a result of a number of technological decisions taken within the framework of healthy conservatism, we managed to make an industrial-grade blockchain platform that has been working steadily since 2013 and did without exciting surprises like the collapse of TheDAO or an accidental drain of 300 million. In general, the thing turned out to be boring, not hype, of little interest to the crypto community. However, it is very interesting for professionals and has received attention both in scientific peer-reviewed journals and at US military conferences. We are pleased with this recognition of our efforts, and we find it funny that while the crypto-figures brainwashed by advertising are headlong chasing discount tokens and other mirages, serious professionals are studying our technologies and making articles and reports about them.. And some people even use these technologies! What kind of technologies does Emercoin have, and why are they of interest to professionals who are far from fintech and other token activities? Reliability first Step by step – we will achieve the goal! (Mao Zedong) As mentioned above, Emer prioritizes reliability. For if there is no reliability, then despite all the sparkling, you have in your hands a toy, nothing more.. And no one will make a more or less serious business critically dependent on toys. As everyone knows, blockchain is a distributed storage of trusted information, where trust (trust) arises as a result of the consolidated efforts of independent miners.. Miners are stimulated by freshly created coins circulating within the corresponding blockchain. Thus, a public blockchain without cryptocurrency is nonsense.. A true public blockchain, even for non-monetary applications, must be built on top of a cryptocurrency. Otherwise, it simply will not have a trust (public trust). And that’s exactly what all cryptocurrencies are, starting with Bitcoin.. By the way, due to the unique hybrid “three in one” consensus implemented in Emercoin, its trust is very high, and the difficulty of PoW (which characterizes the trust) exceeds that of Bitcoin. But in the blockchains of crypto-currencies, only information about payment transactions is stored.. In the Emercoin blockchain, this functionality is expanded, and transactions that manage the NVS subsystem – Name-Value Storage are stored there. NVS can be thought of as a worldwide file system without subdirectories, in which anyone can place their file with a unique Name (up to 512 bytes long) and any content Value (up to 20 Kb). Moreover, only the owner of the file has the right to change its contents or transfer ownership to another person. The mechanism of cryptocurrency transactions is used here as a means of trusted distribution of the corresponding “files” to all network participants. The NVS subsystem is open and has a documented API. Thus, on the basis of NVS, anyone can create their own service, without our participation.. And they create such services! As an example, we can cite the DocSensus notarization service from Deloitte, or the reliable history of the training of students of the Aktiv financial academy. What services are available on Emercoin Oh, my box is full! (Russian folk song) The developers of Emercoin did not stand aside and made a number of non-monetary services on their own blockchain based on NVS. Unlike promises (of varying degrees of feasibility) sold by tokenizers to do something, these services have already been made, are in commercial operation and are available to everyone and free of charge, as open source software (Open Source). Below are the most popular services that “went to the masses”. For a complete list, see the slideshow on the website. one. emerDNS is a decentralized alternative DNS designed to build highly reliable, fault-tolerant networks. Appreciated by websites blocked by Roskomnadzor. Sites have been using an alternative DNS system for years that blockers simply don't see.. There are a number of articles on this topic on Roskomsvoboda, which explain the advantages of this boring system that just works, and cannot be compared with revolutionary ICO projects like Nametoken or Dynatiq launched in 2017 and 2018, while emerDNS was already working in 2014 When it is necessary to cut the dough from the readers of only the first paragraph, then the corresponding projects become the first and revolutionary. Moreover, especially gifted individuals even stated that emerDNS is bad, because there is no speculative liquidity in it! The fact that it works, has the highest trust and is supported by many independent projects, such as OpenNIC, BDNS, PeerName, Fri-Gate – these individuals do not care at all. Good luck to them in their search for liquidity of domain systems! We believe that the above Nametoken, Dynatiq and the like are far from the last attempt to make ICO money, so those who want to play in the liquidity of domain systems will still be given enough chances to prove themselves. And we will continue to develop boring emerDNS. And readers and site owners will use it without any tokens and ICO. 2. ENUMER – distributed telephone directory for IP-telephony systems, VOIP. Allows nodes of federated Internet telephony networks to establish a direct connection with each other, bypassing public telephone network operators. The article describes in detail how it works and how it works, as well as how to connect your VOIP-PBX to the ENUMER network. Currently, the system allows free calls to all toll-free numbers in the USA and Poland, as well as to any other numbers registered in this system.. There is also a software SIP phone for Android, VOIP by Antisip, supporting ENUMER. Just think – download the application, set it up, and you can call hotels, banks, etc. in the USA. — free of charge, without roaming and other payments! And also without tokens and ICO. Emercoin partners in the ENUMER project are softswitch manufacturers PortaOne and eZuce, and the VOIP aggregator SipBroker aggregates information from the ENUMER network in its responses. In addition, Postmet and Meganet have created an automatic number validator for the ENUMER system, where for just 1EMC you can validate your phone number and get the corresponding enum record in your Emer wallet. This validator is also interesting in that it supports user authorization using the emerSSL system certificate, which will be discussed below. More information about the ENUMER system can be found in the list of resources. 3. emerSSL is a decentralized passwordless authorization system based on self-signed SSL client certificates and the Emer NVS subsystem. The article describes in detail why this system is needed and how it is better than password authorization.. Since emerSSL certificates are fully compliant with the X.509 standard, they can be downloaded without any problems in any browser, both on a computer and on an Android / IOS mobile device (we simply did not check other systems). Note that authorization via the emerSSL certificate has 2 advantages over password authorization, which is especially important for mobile devices: Convenience is increased – no need to enter a complex password on the virtual keyboard, especially from a small phone. Increased security – mobile devices are more susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks where you can get “free WiFi” from an attacker. In this case, emerSSL does not establish a connection, and the account is not compromised. No password leaks, for lack thereof. emerSSL technology was used in particular by the Livecoin exchange for user authentication (the exchange closed in January 2021). The very fact that the exchange, which is financially responsible to customers, uses the system, speaks of trust in this system.. The article contains a video instruction on how to make an emerSSL system certificate using the Emercoin wallet, register it in the blockchain and set up access to the exchange using the certificate. Simple, cheap, effective. Authorization by emerSSL is also used on the phone number validation server of the ENUMER system. And again everything is everyday and boring. The system just works. There are no bright and memorable events in her story when someone hacked her and stole a lot of money, which crypto-readers like to read about (especially those who stopped after the first paragraph). No romance and detective intrigue! There are no tokens or ICOs to accompany any exciting crypto action. 4. Randpay is a scalable subsystem for mass micropayments of the Emercoin cryptocurrency. Unlike promises to make a payment system comparable to VISA in performance someday, our Randpay already has such performance – tens of thousands of calculations per second, trillions per year. Due to the “freshness” of the subsystem, it has not yet been put into operation, although there are already applications for use, for example, by DeNet. This concludes a brief excursion into Emercoin technology.. These and our other technologies and subsystems are described on emercoin.com. Visit the site and our other resources, ask questions in the Telegram group and on the Bits.media forum. Knock and it will be opened to you! (Matthew 7:7-11) Summarizing the above, the experience of the Emercoin path says the following: There is life outside of crypto trading and other speculations! Blockchain can be successfully applied to the widest class of real-world tasks that go beyond speculation and token trading. Real projects can be done without tokens and ICOs; this does not make them worse. Companies from the real world show moderate interest in the blockchain and are ready to use technology in their business. A blockchain suitable for use in a real business must first of all be reliable and predictable, that is, boring. Boring is good!