What is ThunderToken?
ThunderToken is the underlying token for the ThunderCore Blockchain. ThunderCore is a fast, high-performance Ethereum-compatible public blockchain, meaning it uses the same language and toolset, with fully decentralized trust that brings scale to decentralized applications. It promises higher throughput, faster confirmation times, and lower costs. It is essentially a cheaper and faster Ethereum. The technology unlocks many potential applications. ThunderToken is to the ThunderCore network what ETH is to the Ethereum network. ThunderToken will be used for paying gas fees on the ThunderCore network.
How does it work?
The Thunder Protocol (based on the “Thunderella” protocol) was developed by Cornell Professors Rafael Pass and Elaine Shi based on years of research. Every step of the protocol is fully specified and backed by mathematical proofs. ThunderCore utilizes a hybrid consensus mechanism, with a standard Ethereum blockchain (“slow path”) and an optimized “fast path”. On the fast path, a committee formed by consensus nodes complete a single round of voting to confirm transactions in under a second. Accelerators — robust, DDoS-resilient distributed systems — coordinate the network of consensus nodes. Users do not need to trust the accelerators nor the consensus nodes; they only need to trust the honest majority.
As long as the accelerators act honestly, network condition is good and 3/4 of the committee members are honest, transactions should always be quick. However, in a worst case scenario where any of the aforementioned conditions are not met, the system will fall back to the slow path and will slow down to the speed of a traditional blockchain, like that of Ethereum. Therefore, in this unlikely scenario that voting fails, the protocol automatically continues to operate using a standard blockchain until the problem is fixed.
What ThunderToken aims to solve?
ThunderCore aims to solve the scalability problems of existing blockchains, especially Ethereum. It hopes to solve the problem while letting users and developers stick to the to the existing wallets (TrustWallet), dev-ops tools (Truffle) and programming languages (Solidity) they are used to.
What are the features of ThunderToken?
Scalable:
High throughput: 1000+ TPS on testnet for Ethereum smart contracts. Fast, near-instant confirmation: block confirmation time in seconds
Cheap
Low gas cost: sub-cent transaction cost. Low redeployment cost: full Ethereum compatibility
EVM Compatibility
Full compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts and its tool chain. Easy migration: no change to source code required, only change RPC to Thunder
Consensus
PoS with a variable committee size. Hundreds of voting nodes running on their public Testnet. An optimal committee size has been chosen based on research.
