summary: 0Chain is a decentralized data storage platform, it was created on Ethereum blockchain. It was launched in 2018.
content: 0Chain (launched 2018) is a decentralized data storage platform, providing data privacy, protection, and private sharing. It is created on Ethereum blockchain and aims to help businesses achieve GDPR/CCPA compliance, transparency, and near-zero liability. ZCN is the native token of the platform and tied to the data stored in the system. It can also be locked or staked in order to generate interest for holders. Company 0chain is developed by US based organization, 0chain LLC. It was founded by visionary entrepreneur, Saswata Basu and an associate professor from San Jose State University, Tom Austin in 2017. The company has a primary office at Cupertino, California, and currently has around 11-50 employees working. Team 0chain has a world class team members that are experienced and skillful in cryptography, distributed computing and cloud infrastructure. Notable contributors include- | Name | Designation | Ref | | ---- | ----------- | --- | | Saswata Basu | Co-Founder & CEO | | | Thomas Austin | Co-Founder & CTO | | | Maxim Prishchepo | Operations | | | Krishna Upadhyaya | Blockchain Developer | | | Sarath Ambati | Senior Architect | | | Kenny Wesela | Protocol Engineer | | | Arinjita Paul | Project Associate | | | Aniruddh Agarwal | FullS tack Developer | | | Manibharathi R | Senior Android Developer | | | Neeraj Negi | Senior iOS Developer | | | Tanuj | Professional cloud architect | | | Chirag Bhaiji | Mobile Developer. | | | K.K. Saravanan | Senior Blockchain Engineer | | | Aditya | Full stack developer. | | | Nikhaar Shah | UI Designer | | | Mo Siam | Operations | | | Derick Fiebiger | Operations | | | Bernie Billota | Operations | | Fundraising 0Chain has raised a total of $5.9M USD in funding over 3 rounds so far. Their pre-seed round raised an undisclosed amount of funds on July 1, 2017. The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and pre sale rounds held in December 2014 raised $5.9 million USD. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 21, 2020 from a . Initial Coin Offering 0chain ICO raised total $39,000,000 USD in just two months. It started in December 2018 and ended on 16 Feb 16, 2018. The ZCN token was priced at 1.4 USD. 10 % ZCN token out of total supply of 400,000,000 were available for ICO round. Overview 0Chain is a decentralized storage platform having features like high performance, private data sharing. It provides automated data privacy compliance, continuous protection, and secured sharing for user application. 0Chain has an immutable data ledger to resolve disputes, conduct audits, and eliminate data liability. In addition, 0Chain enables secured data sharing between customers, partners, internal groups, and employees. The platform extends private data usage in smart contract applications on blockchain platforms such as Hyperledger and Ethereum with simple API interfaces and can provide such integration with any smart contract. It aims to help businesses and enterprises to get complied with GDPR/CCPA with transparency, and near-zero liability. The 0chain protocol addresses typical issues related with proof-of-work blockchain (e.g Bitcoin) such as scalability, energy waste and also problems like data breach, data replication etc. associated with data storage protocols. It utilized various protocols in its ecosystem to achieve fast performance (scalability) and data protection. The miners have multiple ways to earn native ZCN token for providing network much needed stability and security. 0chain launched its initial release on ethereum blockchain in July 2017 and the testnet started in August 208. it is looking to release mainnet in Q1 2021. 0Chain Protocols As mentioned in overview, 0chain makes use of various protocols and technologies to get faster transaction speed, latency and also achieve data protection with privacy. Consensus Protocol Traditional blockchains like bitcoin can take up to an hour to confirm the transactions at times while newer technologies have attempted to improve finalization times using different approaches. 0Chain takes a new approach to enable a fast, flexible, and free platform for dApp through their unique Proof-of-stake consensus protocol. By dividing the work among different groups, confirmation time is improved via reducing network latency. In order to achieve that, 0Chain’s network rely on three main players and gthey collectively called as 'Service Providers'. These three perform several duties that are necessary for a functional blockchain systems such as consensus, storage of blocks, and storage of data.. 1. Miners: Miners run the consensus protocol and generate new transactions to the network. They accept transactions from users and build, verify, notarize, and finalize blocks based on consensus. They need to store wallet and smart contract states on their ledger to ensure submitted transactions are executed correctly. 2. Blobbers: They store required data needed for dApps. The stored data can be of any size and provide a single source of truth for that data. 3. Sharders: Sharders store the blockchain history and respond to queries about the history. They store blocks, keep records of view changes through magic blocks, and respond to queries from users. Anyone joining the network queries the sharders to determine the active members of the blockchain. In 0chain network ,client sends the transaction to the miners, and query the sharders for status. Miners and Sharders get paid for each validated block. They miners further sub-classified into those that act solely as 'miners' and those that act as 'generators' that extend the blockchain by proposing new transactions. Using this way, the network traffic and the time for messages to be sent is reduced which increases network efficiency. The sharders and blobbers both play specialized roles as well and they are also key components of 0Chain’s architecture. This helps everyone an opportunity to play a part as the requirements to become sharder or blobber depends on machine's data storage capability and computation power. To be more specific, machines such as a machine with high data storage capabilities for a blobber, but less computational power than a sharder may need. 0x implements a squared-staking approach to deal with users having multiple accounts and trying to flood a system. The miners and sharders are selected on the basis of an algorithm that uses the square of the number of tokens they have staked (ZCN2). This approach encourages users to stake coins from a single account and also places a greater risk of penalties if they fail to correctly run the protocol. 0Chain network creates faster finalization time because nodes can progress quickly after receiving messages and they do not need to wait until all messages have been delivered in a given round. Storage Protocol Storage Process Illustration The 0Chain protocol takes a different approach compared to traditional blockchains. As mentioned above, the tasks of performing consensus, storing blocks, and data storage are divided into 3 separate entities — miners, sharders, and blobbers, respectively. How storage process works? On chain storage methods make a data heavy transaction resulting in delay of other transactions on the blockchain and off-chain storage methods are susceptible to hacker attacks as they are placed at one place. 0Chain provides a solution to these current problems using rapid consensus method. In this protocol, most of the storage work is allocated Blobbers, which are different group of machines than the miners and so the miners can focus on rapid consensus. The storage providers or blobbers, provide proofs that they are storing the correct contents by writing a Merkle root to the blockchain. Special signed receipts called markers ensure that the blobbers are rewarded for any storage work that they do; a challenge protocol verifies that the blobbers continue to store the data. To validate work, blobbers provide three proofs when challenged by the miners: 1. The data being stored, 2. The relevant system metadata, and 3. The client-signed marker to prove that the correct data is being stored. When these get validated, miners confirm that the blobbers are rewarded for their service and that the client is getting the service for which they are paying. Based on the blobber’s ability to provide the requested data, their stake is rewarded or punished accordingly via a smart contract. Wallet Security Protocol How split key works The procedure to generate, maintain and manage cryptographic keys is still challenging one in wallets that are used currently to store user assets. The lack of wallet technology also adds another challenge to new users. The digital signatures are one of the most computationally intense actions on the blockchain. The users need to generate and authenticate their transactions while miners verify and validate them. Most of the users use wallets these days that require Two-factor authentication (2FA), which recently has been shown to be vulnerable to attacks and these also dependent on the uptime of the network and servers. To address these issues and provide security to the wallets, 0Chain has taken an innovative approach to key generation and management by using multiple devices. Generally, the users have more than one device at their disposal (such as a mobile device and laptop) in which their private-key can generate multiple 'split-keys' and store them in each device respectively. By splitting the key into multiple devices, the wallet achieves- Adequate protection even if a component of the key is lost or corrupt In the case of losing a device or theft, the key is protected Signatures must contain all the split components The