By The latest in blockchain innovation is a blockchain protocol which makes its older blocks “disappear”. This blockchain and the startup behind it O(1) Labs, recently secured an astonishing $15 million.
Announced back in May 2018, Coda protocol is the first project of the blockchain tech startup O(1) Labs. Coda protocol was originally backed by a seed equity round which included MetaStable, Electric Capital, Polychain and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant. Recently the project attracted new investors including Accomplice, Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm and General Catalyst have injected an addition $15 million into the startup’s project.
O(1) Labs has been hard work with the Coda protocol, a blockchain that allows every user, to participate in consensus.
Evan Shapiro, CEO of O(1) Labs stated:
“We see Coda as way more than just payments, what we’re excited about is for Coda to enable new kinds of apps and games made possible by a cryptocurrency with a lightweight blockchain that is way easier to develop for and use.”
The team at O(1) describes the Coda protocol as a succinct blockchain. As per the whitepaper:
“A succinct blockchain is a blockchain with verification complexity essentially independent of chain length.”
Notably, it only takes 22kb to store a copy of the Coda blockchain, and this will always be true according to Shapiro. How is this possible, you ask?
Well, Coda utilises zk-SNARKS in order to generate proof that the most recent block and all prior blocks are accurate and verified.
As soon as the proof is created, even older smartphone models are able to quickly and efficiently verify the validity of the proof as well as store a copy of it locally.
While all this happens, the mains nodes carrying the heavy load of generating those proofs no longer need to hold onto old blocks. If and when the proof is validated, they can be chucked.
In a nutshell, this means, unlike Bitcoin, to participate in the network as a node won’t require terabytes of space. Every mobile wallet can partake at that basic level, thus aiding in the security of the system and ultimately providing confidence to all users.
Ash Egan of Accomplice VC, in an email, called O(1) Labs:
“an ambitious team taking a unique approach to the hotly contested base layer protocol category.”
What’s On The Horizon?
Shapiro, at the time of press, declined to confirm a timeline for when Coda tokens would be released and stated:
“Expect updates on this in the coming months.”
However, it must be noted that Coda’s testnet has been up and running since September and its protocol has also been open sourced on GitHub.
While explicit details are limited at this stage, Shapiro has promised that devs would be able to integrate Coda into their apps using only a “script” tag. Unlike the extensions which ethereum users are used to (like MetaMask), technically it would be simpler to build Coda into an app such as a video game.
O(1) is already inviting users to participate in a number of ways, such as running nodes or joining its app program.
Accomplice’s Egan stated:
“Coda’s approach democratizes consensus, validation and accessibility for users around the world.”
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