The main goal of the Insolar project is to become the most business-oriented Distributed Ledger System solution in the market. However, under the hood, we are able to find a lot of hidden innovations.

The main feature of the Insolar project that we will discuss is the combination of node role allocation and sharing which allows the Insolar blockchain to reach a performance of over 19,500 transactions per second (proof at Insolar explorer). Added to that, the usage of these different roles in the network allows Insolar to process business documents on-chain which is a huge benefit for businesses and gives them legal rights on-chain.

However, scaling up a blockchain often leads to some deep-rooted problems. The problem with decentralized systems is that they become more centralized when scaling up, the most well-known example is miner centralization which plagues many projects.

THE DCS THEOREM

According to the DCS Theorem, only two properties can be simultaneously achieved of ​Decentralization, ​Consensus, and ​Scale. The DCS theorem is actually a triangle that defines the relationships between the three properties. Although the triangle states that only two properties are possible, the theorem can be manipulated by properly structuring the problem.

Block Storage and Node Role Allocation

One of the interesting aspects is the way Insolar organizes its network. The network consists of ​Storage and ​Processing nodes whereas the Storage nodes can be further divided into“Heavy”​ and ​“Light”​ material.

Heavy nodes have the job of storing the blocks consisting of the ledger, however, none of the nodes stores the full ledger. This decision has been made keeping in mind the issue of security and storage capacity.

The ​Light material nodes are in charge of only the recent history of the ledger and are used for internal network traffic.

Processing nodes are in charge of computational tasks and verifying transactions. Normally, with other chains like Ethereum, every node is aware of the smart contracts in the network and they can all process its transactions.

Insolar has decided to opt for asynchronous processing to increase performance even further. Each smart contract is delegated to a single node whereas other randomly selected nodes are in charge of verifying the results from the processing nodes also known as validators.

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Embedded contracts

Enterprise business logic must have the ability to create complicated smart contracts with heavy ledgers inside them. In the Ethereum contract model, all data is stored inside the smart contracts.

Alternatively, Insolar decided to use key-value storage for their smart contracts as it’s the most simple and lightweight form of data storage. Whenever storage is needed, the contract calls the needed data and not the full state like the case is for Ethereum smart contracts that store all data inside the contract.

Using Insolar’s approach, neither the user nor the contract creator needs to pay excessive fees for working with large smart contracts. Again, this predictable cost of smart contract usage is a great benefit for businesses.

Contracts themselves can be developed using Golang (Java and other languages will be added soon) as the language is very efficient while processing logic.

All these features might give a chance to the Insolar project to have a large-scale adoption across industries.