Experts in America are reportedly working on developing a powerful substitute of Bitcoin capable of processing thousands of transaction within a second. The current version of Bitcoin has failed to carry out multiple transactions in a short span of time.
Professors of various universities in the US including University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University are working together towards the development of the digital currency with speedy transactions. The digital currency thus created will be based on the foundation of Bitcoin i.e. decentralization. The only difference will be the speed at which transaction will be completed. The new digital currency dubbed Unit-e would the first initiative of a non-profit foundation Distributed Technology Research (DTR), formed by the academics backed by hedge fund Pantera Capital Management LP.
The original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was the first payment network that enabled parties to make/receive payment directly with the interference of a central authority or relying on each another. Although the digital currency supports the decentralized movement of payment, its adoption among developers, speculators, and anarchists has been elusive.
DTR in a research paper said that the speculation and skepticism regarding the adoption of the Bitcoin have reduced the usefulness of the cryptocurrency. The Unit-e being developed by the academic is expected to process a transaction at a much faster pace than Visa.
Joey Krug the co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital and also a member of the DTR council in San Francisco said that the majority of the public carries a notion that networks like that of Bitcoin do not work. The product that the academics are working on is expected to overcome the shortfalls of the Bitcoin. If it failed, the product would turn out to be an idea that was nice just like 3D printing than the internet, added Joey Krug.
DTR is mulling to release Unit-e by H2 2019 as it aims to process around 10,000 transactions per second. The current average of the digital currency is somewhere between 3.3 and 7 transactions per second, especially for Bitcoin. For Ethereum, the transaction is average is 10-30 per second. The new virtual currency multiplies transaction swiftly as compared to Visa, which has a centralized network. Visa processes nearly 1,700 transactions per second on an average.
The scalability challenge of Bitcoin is a part of its ecosystem: the frequency within which the latest blocks, are registered of transactions, could be designed and their maximum size is restricted.
DTR has deconstructed the digital ledger or blockchain technology that backs most cryptocurrencies and helps improve an effective element of it as it aimed to attain greater speed and scalability in the virtual currency, as stated by Pramod Viswanath researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The group working on developing the new virtual currency first tried to understand the performance limits of the blockchain, said Viswanath. The academics are now using their knowledge thus gained at the time of understanding the blockchain for developing the mechanism of Unit-e.
