Blockchain Technology
Minting / Issuance and Minter / Issuer
“Minting” is the process of arbitrarily creating instances of an asset class by a trustable authority (the “Minter”) in Xnet. Minting implies the use of a trust management system that enables the nodes to verify the minter’s Digital Identity. A minting process of a given asset class can be defined as:
• Centralized: one and only one authority is allowed to mint instances of the Asset Class
• Delegated: a “root authority” explicitly grants the right to mint the Asset Class to one or several “delegated authorities”. It may or may not systematically require the signature of the root authority.
Typically, Minting is suitable for asset classes whose supply is directly controlled by an Authority or whose supply rules are implemented outside Xnet (monetary authority fiat currencies, company’s equity, bonds, etc.).
Minting is equivalent to “issuance” in Xnotes context.
A Minter is an identifiable Authority who is legitimately authorized to sign transactions that supply Xnet with assets of identifiable asset classes. Minters must setup and broadcast their Digital Identity in Xnet.
Nodes may accept to trust a Minter or not. In the case of “Centralized Minting”, the Minter is also called the Asset Class Root Authority. In the case of “Delegated Minting”, the Asset Class Root Authority grants one or more Delegate Authorities the right to mint instances of his asset class by generating, signing and broadcasting a Digital Identity Certificate that is setup with the relevant permissions and associated with the Delegate Authorities’ Digital Identity.
Mining and Miner
“Mining” is the process of creating an instance of an asset class by a “Miner”,
according to commonly agreed and verifiable set of rules called the “consensus protocol”. “Proof-of-Work” and “Proof-of- Stake” are the most commonly used consensus protocol.
Mining is a competitive process that does not necessarily imply the use of a trust management system. Mining is available in Xnotes as a value supply method and is suitable for purely digital assets such as digital currencies, whose supply rules are exclusively implemented on Xnet and are known to all the nodes.
Xnotes Signature Scheme
The Xnotes signature system is based on the Merkle tree one-time signature
scheme, which:
• Enables the use of disposable private keys in order to prevent private key
theft
• Prevents brute force attack on public key since there is no mathematical
relationship between the private keys and the public key.
Digital Identity
A Digital Identity allows an account owner to digitally sign transactions. It is a file that is securely saved on a node using a protected password and associated with one unique account. A Digital Identity is only accessible by the account owner.
A Digital Identity is composed of a Digital Identity Certificate signed by a trusted Authority and a Private Key. The data structure of an Xnotes Digital Identity conforms to the PKCS#12 Standard.
Workflow and Self-Executable Agreement
A workflow is a pre-defined model of event -driven transactions that can be comprehensively represented by a logical graph. The Xnotes workflow engine heavily relies on Xnet’s message syndication and authorization capabilities
to notify the involved nodes or resource objects under relevant conditions. Xnotes Workflow models are maintained by reputed industry leaders and promote industry best practices.
A Self-Executable Agreement (SEA) is an electronically signed document that
embeds a set of Xnotes workflows in order to regulate transactions between
multiple-parties under pre-defined agreed conditions. SEAs can be easily evaluated by non-code-savvy business parties. That is why SEAs are also referred to as “smarter smart contracts”.
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