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Jérémy Pansier edited this page Jan 8, 2023 · 50 revisions

Preamble: A fair currency would favor the poorest over the wealthiest. It could intrinsically provide a universal income for small wallets, while also applying fees proportional to capital. This way, users of the cryptocurrency would form a community separate from speculators, who would not be interested in using it. The currency would no longer be subject to price fluctuations that negatively impact small wallets.

Introduction

As cryptocurrencies have risen in popularity, many protocols have introduced innovative ideas based on blockchain technology, such as smart contracts and NTFs. Despite their benefits, the public remains skeptical about the value and legitimacy of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Many politicians, financial regulators, and others see these technologies solely as an industry for gambling and speculation. This is because a large proportion of cryptocurrency holders use them for speculative purposes, which overshadows the primary motivation that inspired the creators of the first blockchains. It's important to remember that the original purpose of Bitcoin was to protect its holders from the risks of a centralized monetary system. Based on a decentralized system, Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies meet this need; there is no authority with power over price, liquidity, and transaction validation for most cryptocurrencies. This creates a separation of power between money and state. Additionally, most cryptocurrencies are deflationary. If we look at the long term, the value of the tokens of the main cryptocurrencies has never fallen below their initial price. However, there is price volatility that has no equivalent among non-digital assets. This volatility is mainly due to excessive speculation around the price of crypto assets. This is proof that, although we can talk about the separation of power between money and state, there is no separation of power between money and finance. The only way to achieve this is to eliminate incentives for traders who use a currency as a financial asset.

Ruthenium : Anticapitalist electronic cash system

The Ruthenium blockchain is in many ways similar to the Bitcoin blockchain, although it does have some differences. The main differences are:

Transaction

In Ruthenium, the term "transaction" refers to a signed data package that stores an amount to be sent from a sender wallet to a recipient wallet. Each transaction contains:

  • The creation timestamp
  • The wallet recipient’s address.
  • The wallet sender’s address.
  • The sender’s public key.
  • The signature.
  • The amount.
  • The fee.

The sender’s public key is needed to verify the transaction signature when verifying a new block.

Block

In Ruthenium, the term "block" refers to a signed data package that stores transacions. Each block contains:

  • The creation timestamp.
  • The previous block hash.
  • The transactions.
  • The addresses registered in the Proof of Humanity registry at this block creation time.

Network

The steps to run the network are as follows:

  1. New transactions are broadcast to all nodes.
  2. Every minute, each node collects new transactions into a block.
  3. Every 10 seconds, each node verifies the new blocks of the neighbor’s nodes, selects one of them and broadcasts it to all nodes.
  4. Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent. Nodes favor the longest chains and select the one created by the oldest validator.
  5. Nodes express their acceptance of the block by including it in their local copy of the blockchain; creating the next block in the chain, using the hash of the accepted block as the previous hash.

Validation

Each node validates the pending transactions before adding them to the next block. The algorithm for checking if the transactions are valid is as follows:

  1. Check that the timestamp of the transaction is greater than that of the previous block and is less than 2 minutes in the future.
  2. Check that there is one or only one reward per block.
  3. Check that each transaction timestamp is valid.
  4. Check that each transaction signature is valid.
  5. Check that the total transactions amount to and from a wallet address is less than the wallet amount.

Then, all valid transactions are added to a new block with an additional reward transaction.

Verification

Each node checks the blockchain by checking all new blocks. A block whose reference is not known by the validator node is considered a new block. The algorithm for checking if a new block is valid is as follows:

  1. Check if the previous block referenced by the block exists and is valid.
  2. Check that the timestamp of the block is exactly 1 minute greater than that of the previous block and is not in the future.
  3. Check that there is one or only one reward per block.
  4. Check that the reward amount is valid.
  5. Check that each transaction timestamp is valid.
  6. Check that each transaction signature is valid.
  7. Check that the total transactions amount from a wallet address is less than the wallet amount.
  8. Check that the reward recipient’s Proof of Humanity is valid for the last block.

Proof of Humanity

In Ruthenium, trust is neither based on Proof of Work nor on Proof of Stake. The protocol uses Proof of Humanity to ensure that a real human is running only one node.

Proof of Humanity is a concept concretized by Santiago Siri. It ensures that one real human owns only one wallet address.

Using this principle:

  • Ruthenium allows only one node per real human. Each validator must be registered in the Proof of Humanity registry with the same Ethereum wallet address used by its validator node.
  • Ruthenium pays a basic income to humans registered in the Proof of Humanity registry with the same Ethereum wallet address used by its wallet.

Among the trusted nodes, the one which have not been selected for the longest time is selected to create the next block.

Reward

A validator gets a reward each time he validates a new block. The reward amount is equivalent to the addition of the fees of each transaction of the created block.

Income

Each single human is eligible to receive an income. To receive this income, only the two following things are needed:

  • Being registered in the Proof of Humanity registry with an Ethereum wallet address.
  • Having spent some tokens from a Ruthenium wallet having the same address as the Ethereum one used to register in the Proof of Humanity registry.

It means that, if the Proof of Humanity registration expires, a new registration and a new spending is required to get the income.

For each minute, the income calculus formula is as follows:

${N}$: the wallet amount

$$ income=N^{0.54692829} $$

The figure below presents the evolution of the income amount depending on the wallet amount. We can see that the highest income amount (0.0282 Ruthenium per minute) is reached for a wallet amount of around 26,000 Rutheniums.

image

Disintegration

The ruthenium 106 $(^{106}Ru)$ radioisotope has a half-life of 373.59 days. In the same vein, Ruthenium wallets amounts also disintegrate. The wallet amount is calculated on demand by reading the blockchain transactions. The following formula is applied before each transaction and after the last one, to obtain the disintegrated wallet amount:

${λ}$: the decay constant
${t_{1/2}}$: the $^{106}Ru$ half-life
${t}$: the elapsed time
${N_0}$: the wallet initial amount
${N_t}$: the wallet amount at time ${t}$

$$ λ=log⁡(2)/t_{1/2} $$

$$ N_t=N_0e^{-λt} $$

As we can see in the figure below, combining the disintegration with the income, any wallet amount tends to 100,000 Rutheniums:

  • If a human holds more than 100,000 Rutheniums, his wallet amount will decrease over time.
  • If a human holds less than 100,000 Rutheniums, his wallet amount will increase over time.

image

Wallet

To be described

Node

To be described

Scalability

To be described

Deflation

To be described

Conclusion

The Ruthenium protocol is designed to eliminate any interest in speculating on the value of its token. It would be necessary to make profits of more than 200% per year just to maintain the initial amount, which seems unrealistic and unnecessary. As a result, speculators would likely prioritize other assets. In addition, capitalization is not profitable beyond 100,000 tokens. This cryptocurrency is intended for fair trade and responds to the growing demand for universal income. It is much more lucrative to benefit from the income or rewards than to hope for dividends from financial investment. Furthermore, since the selection of nodes is based on Proof of Humanity rather than an energy-intensive algorithm, this protocol also addresses environmental concerns by proposing a sustainable monetary system.

This concept will only come to life with the massive participation of contributors. Each connection of a new validator node to the network will strengthen its robustness. Each user who makes transactions through this protocol will give more credit to the project.

Jérémy Pansier - jpansier@my-cloud.me

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