An Ultra-Scalable Blockchain Platform for Universal Asset Tokenization: Design and Implementation

Abstract

Since its introduction with Bitcoin in 2009, blockchain technology has received tremendous attention by academia, industry, politics and media alike, in particular, through extended blockchain-based visions such as smart contracts, decentralized finance, and, most recently, Web3. The critical prerequisite for any such blockchain-based vision to be turned into reality is uncapped scalability. Furthermore, and equally important, blockchain technology needs to transcend the stage of specialized tokens into an adaptive, heterogeneous tokenization platform. In this paper, we explain the Alphabill family of technologies that addresses both unlimited scalability and unrestricted adaptivity. We deliver a sharded blockchain technology with unlimited scalability and performance, called KSI Cash, which is based on a new form of electronic money scheme, the bill scheme. We present performance tests of KSI Cash that we have conducted with the European Central Bank and a group of eight national central banks from the Eurosystem in order to assess the technological feasibility of a digital euro. We show the system operating with 100 million wallets and 15 thousand transactions per second (under simulation of realistic usage); having an estimated carbon footprint of 0.0001g CO2 per transaction (Bitcoin = 100 kg and more). Furthermore, we show the system operating with up to 2 million payment orders per second, an equivalent of more than 300,000 transactions per second (in a laboratory setting with the central components of KSI Cash), scaling linearly in terms of the number of deployed shards. We explain, in detail, the key concepts that unlock this performance (i.e., the concepts of the bill money scheme). The results provide evidence that the scalability of our technology is unlimited in both permissioned and permissionless scenarios, resulting into the Alphabill Money technology. Next, we contribute the architecture of a universal tokenization platform that allows for universal asset tokenization, transfer and exchange as a global medium of exchange, called Alphabill platform. We reveal the crucial conceptual and technical contributions of the platform's architecture and their interplay, including the data structures of KSI Cash and Alphabill Money, the dust collection solution of Alphabill Money, and the atomic swap solution of the Alphabill platform.

Tokenized Markets Using Blockchain Technology: Exploring Recent Developments and Opportunities

“…Using established standards such as ERC-20 for security tokens or ERC-721 for non-fungible tokens is recommended [25]. Thirdly, tokenized platforms must be scalable to handle large volumes of transactions, which can be achieved through selecting appropriate consensus mechanisms such as PoW or PoS, implementing off-chain solutions such as sidechains or state channels, and optimizing transaction fees to pay network validators for their services to the blockchain [26]. Lastly, tokenized platforms must be user-friendly and accessible to a broad range of investors.…”

“…By examining recent case studies, best practices for developing asset tokenization platforms have been identified. These practices include ensuring compliance with regulations, carefully designing smart contracts, scaling the platform appropriately, and prioritizing user experience [24][25][26][27]. Asset tokenization platforms hold significant potential as a use case for blockchain technology.…”

PenChain: A Blockchain-Based Platform for Penalty-Aware Service Provisioning

“…High performance is achieved by parallelization. In the context of databases, parallelization (which is a form of technological decentralization) is investigated under the label of sharding, both in blockchains [14], [107], [108] and established database technology. 5,6,7,8 In blockchains, timestamping is a critical technical feature needed in distributed consensus protocols [109].…”

“…Currently, the blockchain mainstream transcends the blockchain vision into the vision of the so-called Web3. 3 The Web3 vision shows all the ingredients of the blockchain vision and its many initiatives that are centered around a notion of decentralization of payments, financial services, digital identities, data and business models [13], [14], [15]. However, Web3 steps further and aims at taking blockchain decentralization to a next level by making it ubiquitous, turning it into a universal ecosystem.…”

“…Service-oriented computing and service provisioning are crosscutting concepts with highest relevance for all business domains [25], [26], [27], and, wherever services are provided, proper SLAs are a critical success factor. Similarly, in the last decade, blockchain technology has been successfully applied in countless projects from all kinds of domains, ranging from payment services [14], [28] over financial services [29], [30], insurances [31], [32], real estate [33], [34], manufacturing [35], [36], [37], agriculture [24], [38], [39], food production [40], [41], logistics [42], [43], healthcare [44], [45], tourism [22], [46], to e-government [7], [11], [47], [48], public administration [49], [50], [51], and e-court [52], [53], [54] -just to name a few. Therefore, we argue that PenChain is relevant to a maximally wide range of domains.…”