Emercoin implements a solution to blockchain data inflation

The controversial concept of “blocksize” in cryptocurrencies has been uncharted territory for the past year. With growing concerns about blockchain inflation and how to better scale the technology, cryptocurrency Emercoin has taken a forward-thinking approach and granted Cointelegraph an exclusive report on their solution.

When making a transaction, each cryptocurrency can only consume all UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output). When a wallet has many historical transactions and needs a new spending transaction (payment), it will select the optimal feature subset of UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) to generate payment.

The following is the creative logic model:

A reasonable subset size is 2 ^N , where N is the number of available UTXOs. Therefore, if a wallet has more than 20 UTXOs, it is almost impossible to search through them all and find the best subset of UTXOs to spend.

Current Solution

Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrency wallets use a random method to select the best subset of UTXOs. In this algorithm, the wallet completes 1000 attempts at randomly selecting UTXOs. The subset with the smallest amount matches the output transaction. Then, the payment transaction generates 2 outputs: the payment output and the variable output. The probability of finding the best solution is that the sum of UTXOs exactly matches the very low output value. Emercoin estimates the probability of a match (approximate formula): (N _fit * N _attempts ) / (2 ^N ).

illustrate:

N is the number of UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs),
N _fit is the number of possible optimal trades (no changes),
N _attempts is 1000, the current Bitcoin wallet code.

A necessary and efficient solution

In the current implementation, the optimal subset of UTXOs will most likely disappear, thus creating an unnecessary second UTXO (unspent transaction output) added to the transaction in order to increase the transaction size, and the blockchain size will also increase due to the additional active UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs).

In addition, this method generates a large number of unvalued UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs), also known as "gold sand" or "dust", which are considered garbage in transactions and are generally unwelcome. As blockchain technology grows exponentially, a better way to handle UTXO (unspent transaction output) is needed.

This project relies heavily on the use of dynamic rules. What are the dynamic rules used in the solution? Dynamic rules are a powerful technique for dealing with special problems. The dynamic rules must be concise in formula, concise in ideas, and easy to use in the coding part.

Emercoin’s Solution

Emercoin seeks opportunities in the blockchain industry and brings forward thinking, forward-looking vision to blockchain development and innovation. Our latest innovation is the "Transaction Optimizer", an algorithm that selects the optimal subset of unspent UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs) to be used for new output transactions (payments).

If there is any UTXO (unspent transaction output) subset that corresponds exactly to the output quantity, the subset will be discovered by the "transaction optimizer" and used to complete the new transaction, and no additional and unnecessary second UTXO (unspent transaction output) will be generated, reducing the amount of information input to the transaction on the blockchain. The "transaction optimizer" uses a dynamic rule method, requiring: O(V) memory and O(V*N) time, which is much more optimized than the current O(2 ^N ).

illustrate:

V is the output value of TX

The "Transaction Optimizer" can also effectively solve the "gold sand" and "dust" transactions that have been generated in previous years, further reducing the size of the blockchain and "cleaning" it. The transaction optimizer code is open source and can be obtained from the official website of Emercoin source code library (Github), and can also be used for other cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms.

“Transaction optimizer saves storage space on the blockchain. We estimate that it saves 5% to 10% of the storage space of BC,” Oleg Khovayko, chief technology officer of Emercoin, told CoinTelegraph. “Of course, this is not much for the total amount in the blockchain, but it is free and will relieve network congestion.”

Oleg Khovayko, CTO of EmerCoin

Emercoin’s achievements

Emercoin has been successfully using the "Transaction Optimizer" to process transactions on its blockchain for several months with excellent results, resulting in a reduction in the size of all transactions, and thus the size of the blockchain. This solution can now be applied worldwide to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to combat blockchain bloat. We encourage our peers to adopt this free, revolutionary innovation.

“We plan to expand this project to the ‘real world’ – creating and providing services to help people change their stereotypes about cryptocurrencies,” Khovayko said. “We are committed to unlocking the real power of blockchain, not only using it to exchange ‘reputation units’, but also for other applications.”

For an example of Emercoin's optimized transaction, please view the following transaction via the Emercoin block explorer search. Finally, you can witness an example of a recent optimized transaction on the Emercoin blockchain. Emercoin has certainly made the blockchain size grow slower and the total number of transactions smaller, leaving more space.