Decentralized Governance for Smart Contract Platform Enabling Mobile Lite Wallets Using a Proof-of-Stake Consensus Algorithm

Abstract

Permissionless blockchain-enabled smart contracts that use the proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm for validation of transactions have scalability and on-chain governance as a primary concern. We consider smart contracts that use lite mobile wallets with support of the unspent transaction output protocol (UTXO) and simple payment verification (SPV) to increase the number of transaction throughput. Furthermore, we investigate in this paper to which extent it is possible to change the parameters of the blockchain using smart contracts in hot parameter swaps at runtime for enabling continuous soft forks. The leading smart contract solution Ethereum does not have the functionality to change blockchain parameters and requires hard forks multiple times, and thus, Ethereum smart contracts are not scalable for large industrial applications. This whitepaper fills the gap by presenting the Qtum’s decentralized-governance protocol (DGP) that aims for managing essential blockchain parameters using smart contracts for enabling frequent soft forks. Compared with the Ethereum alternative, we explore the Qtum utility advantages and current Qtum smart contract future development plans integrating dedicated x86 hardware development for industry case applications.