Bringing back the focus on blockchain, this time — bridging both public and private

When blockchain made its debut in 2008, the technology was completely overshadowed by its application —  Bitcoin. 

From an infrastructure technology perspective, there was a team that believed beyond the context of cryptocurrency, there’s a promising future where businesses and individuals will thrive in a more efficient, interactive and inclusive digital economy.

ParallelChain claims to have identified the attributes that limit the use of blockchain in the real world, addressed them one by one, and built a new base layer blockchain from scratch.

“Since its birth in 2018, ParallelChain has been a private network for traditional finance (TradFi). The purpose of the Mainnet project is to make TradFi and DeFi future-ready for the imminent evolution of the financial system as the two become more intertwined,” says the company’s founder and CEO, Ian Huang.

The Mainnet will see the completion of ParallelChain: a seamless ecosystem where TradFi and DeFi co-exist and bring their own merits as we enter the digital economy.

1. With the most popular known protocols Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, what is the ParallelBFT protocol, and how does it work?

ParallelBFT is HotStuff with two major optimizations — speculative execution and consensus on hashes — as well as a slew of subtle optimizations that are too numerous to enumerate. A sizable body of work has shown that HotStuff and HotStuff-derived algorithms dominate all other BFT consensus algorithms in performance. 

We have also ideated an execution sharding protocol built on top of basic ParallelBFT that gives us the option to sacrifice some fault tolerance in exchange for extra throughput, providing a potential path for scaling Mainnet in the future if it hits higher-than-expected usage.

2. According to your official website, ParallelChain has both public and private networks – what does the interplay between them look like?

Compared to other public-private blockchain interfaces like Cosmos Zones, private ParallelChain networks will have a lot more flexibility in how they choose to interact, or not interact with the Mainnet.

As in Cosmos, they will be able to use the Mainnet as a hub for cross-chain communication, but additionally, they will also be able to use Rollups — Optimistic and Zero-Knowledge —  to piggyback on Mainnet's robust BFT consensus to enhance their security.

Even before we started putting private ParallelChain down in code, the view that we've held is that businesses will remain businesses; they will always favor privacy. If leveraging blockchain means that they have to put their sensitive data into radically open, crypto-anarchic public networks, then they would rather avoid the blockchain space entirely.

We expect our enterprise customers to start off with fully private ParallelChain networks and then slowly begin to open up their private networks to the Mainnet to enjoy network effects and stronger security guarantees.

3. What is the concept behind Smart city, fintech and ParallelChain?

Smart city and fintech are essentially initiatives that use technology to digitize everything and merge various systems and infrastructures into one organism. Blockchain sits at the infrastructure level and ensures these AI and IoT-powered systems' secure, reliable, and smooth functioning.

ParallelChain is the only blockchain on the market that is fast and scalable enough to support these applications. In addition to the performance requirements, the blockchain must also conform to strict regulatory standards to facilitate compliant smart city applications and fintech services – all of which ParallelChain can deliver.

4. What kind of team do you have?

The ParallelChain team embodies the R&D spirit and aspires to transform the status quo for the better with blockchain technology. Breakthrough is found in diversity – at ParallelChain, we witness every day the sheer brilliance pouring from the interaction between industry experts with decades of experience and bright young minds full of novel ideas. 

5. Where do you stand on the industry regulations? What kind of regulations need to be in place to avoid legal actions, given the recent scrutiny Binance and Ripple are facing?

Compliance is at the heart of many businesses, and since our company was initially made for the enterprise world, it already has built-in mechanisms that satisfy global standards and regulations like KYC, data privacy, etc. But more importantly, we made sure ParallelChain has the flexibility to adapt to a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.

This regulatory haze befogging DeFi won’t clear up anytime soon. While the exchanges and wallet providers are the most obvious targets for regulation, the collateral impact and potential clampdown on the public blockchain networks are much harder to grasp.

One thing is clear, projects that follow the “default” framework won’t be able to navigate in the future.

ParallelChain has a genetic upper hand in this situation, thanks to the previously mentioned regulatory compatibility of the blockchain and the Mainnet’s uniquely designed node operation and ParallelBFT consensus that lead to a governance model of integrity and accountability.

In addition, for the platform to serve as a combined ecosystem for TradFi and DeFi means that it has to accommodate both sides. A tricky challenge we have successfully overcome is providing the former with transaction traceability, for enterprise compliance, without compromising the privacy facet of the latter.

6. Let’s talk about DeFi. What are potential implementations to the mainstream platforms? Is there a possible way to avoid rug pulls in DeFi, and what kind of actions need to be taken to achieve that?

One of DeFi’s most anticipated mainstream adoptions has to be the peer-to-peer money or asset transfer system. However, existing major networks, such as Ethereum and BSC, have too low TPS and too high transaction fees for everyday use. With smart contract capability and the high throughput achieved by parallel processing, a cheaper yet faster transaction is definitely one of the key contributions ParallelChain brings to the community.  

Indeed, the market is filled with more hype than substance. Whether a project is committed to fulfilling what it promises and has what it takes to turn vision into reality – the answer lies in its technology.