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FAQ#

This page aims to provide a background on Ergo and answers to some of the most frequently asked questions.

Background#

Why 'Ergo'?#

Ergo means "therefore" in Latin but "work" in Greek. This is also a play on the fact that the cryptocurrency's design is ergonomical.

Why Ergo?#

Ergo is a next-generation smart contract platform enabling anyone to participate in the digital DeFi revolution.

Ensuring economic freedom for ordinary people through decentralised, private and secure financial tools.

πŸ”‘ Key Objectives

  • Research-led but real-world-focused: Ergo draws on ten years of blockchain development, complementing tried and tested principles with the best peer-reviewed academic research into cryptography, consensus models and digital currencies. We start with solid blockchain basics and implement new and powerful cryptography natively.

  • Powerful & Safe: Ergo provides superior support for real-world financial agreements. Ergo can support versatile dApps that run predictably, with known costs, and don't have any of the dangers of unrestricted functionality. Ergo's smart contracts allow us to execute wide-ranging tasks and can be Turing complete, but we always know in advance how much the code will cost and whether it will run successfully.

  • Intelligent and Straightforward: Sigma Protocols (Ξ£-Protocols) are the foundation of Ergo's smart contracts. They allow for a class of efficient zero-knowledge protocols that enable us to implement sophisticated tasks that would otherwise be impossible, risky, or expensive. Welcome to self-sovereign application-level privacy: trustless scripts that can access mixers or other functionality without any third parties required.
  • Secure and Accessible: Ordinary users who do not run a full node should enjoy the same security benefits as miners. Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work (NIPoPoWs) allow us to make and verify transactions with complete confidence without needing the storage, bandwidth and time required to download the full blockchain. As little as 1 MB of data is necessary, meaning you can use any device.

πŸ”‘ Key Features

  • Sigma Protocols (Ξ£) - a type of non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that are flexible enough to allow for ring-signatures, multi signatures, multiple currencies, atomic swaps, self-replicating scripts, and long-term computation.
  • Multi-stage Contracts - In addition to the regular protection offered by using a threshold m‐of‐n signature, Ergo also allows specifying the possible recipients of these coins, which may be another contract with similar complex conditions. This "chaining" approach enables the implementation of secure and efficient smart contracts of arbitrary complexity.
  • Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof of Work (NIPoPoWs) are essential for two reasons: Light Clients and Side Chains. Ergo DApps and off-chain protocols may be implemented in a truly decentralised way due to light clients.
  • Storage Rent acts as on-chain garbage collection

Keeping all this in mind, we expect Ergo's design to be uniquely useful as Contractual Money.

Where can I see a Roadmap?#

The roadmap on our website includes some of the most anticipated projects and features coming to Ergo. (As well as links to read more!)

For the upcoming year our main priorities will be

  • Building up the developer education & tooling
  • Bridge Infrastructure
  • Cross-chain swaps
  • Privacy Tooling
  • Scaling Solutions
  • Sidechains
  • Light Clients
  • Research and new designs (Dexy, ChainCash, SigmaJoin, etc)

For more detailed information of our current and potential research & development see Appendix D.

What is the Ergo Foundation?#

The Ergo Foundation is a community-driven entity focused on:

  • Promoting non-breaking development of Ergo Platform protocol;
  • Promoting the widespread adoption and use of Ergo Platform and its native token (ERG);
  • Developing the ecosystem around the Ergo Platform;
  • Promoting the use of Ergo Platform and blockchain technology for social good;
  • Supporting truly decentralised infrastructure and;
  • Supporting privacy as a basic human right.

To fund development, promotion, events, and any other activities which may advance the platform, Ergo has in place a Treasury, which will receive 4.43% of the Ergs released during emission. During the first two years post‐mainnet launch, the Treasury received 7.5 Ergs per block.

What is the Emission Schedule?#

Ergo has a maximum supply of 97,739,925 Ergs, to be completed by 2045. The block reward lowers to 3ERG in 2026. You can see this emission schedule on ergo.watch

When was Ergo launched?#

Mainnet July 2019. Before this, there was Ergo-First-Year-Token

What is EFYT?

Ergo-First-Year-Token was airdropped and distributed on Waves DEX starting with a 100,000 EFYT airdrop in May 2017. EFYT served the dual purposes of helping build an early community of stakeholders and enthusiasts for Ergo and raising a small number of funds for the platform before launch to fund development, promotion etc. EFYT is strictly a Waves token and is not the same as an Erg; the Ergo mainnet native token is mined after Ergo's mainnet launch.

The max supply of EFYT is 1,970,945.0. This is 10% of the first year of Ergo token emission and the same number of Ergs that the Treasury will receive, meaning that the Treasury will have received 1,970,945.0 Ergs during year 1, sufficient to swap the max supply of EFYT for Erg.

Why 97,739,924?#

A pre-agreed smart contract controls emission in Ergo, so we tried to have a simple enough emission curve with the total limited supply being close to 100M (and emission to be done in 8-10 years).

The max supply is simply the amount needed to create the initial genesis state:

  • A box with proof-of-no-premine (1 ERG)
  • Foundation treasury (4,330,791.5 ERG)
  • Miner Reward Box with the required ERG for 2,080,800 Blocks according to the emission schedule until rewards equal 0 and storage rent and EIP-27-reemission-box takes over (93,409,132 ERG).

The treasury box is protected by a vesting smart contract that ensures an initial unlocked amount and then only releases an amount of ERG that provides funds for 2.5 years (never exceeding 10% of the circulating supply). All of this results in these specific amounts.

In total, this happens to be 97,739,924.5 ERG.

For proof-of-no-premine, the pre-genesis state in Ergo contains block hashes from Bitcoin and Eth and also headlines from the Guardian, Vedomosti and Xinhua around the moment of launch, which can be seen in mainnet.conf

"`scala /* * Genesis box that contains proofs of no premine. * It is a long-living box with special bytes in registers / private def noPremineBox(chainSettings: ChainSettings): ErgoBox = { val proofsBytes = chainSettings.noPremineProof.map(b => ByteArrayConstant(b.getBytes("UTF-8"))) val proofs = ErgoBox.nonMandatoryRegisters.zip(proofsBytes).toMap createGenesisBox(EmissionRules.CoinsInOneErgo, Constants.FalseLeaf, Seq.empty, proofs) } 

"`JSON
 {
"boxId": "b8ce8cfe331e5eadfb0783bdc375c94413433f65e1e45857d71550d42e4d83bd",
"value": 1000000000,
"ergoTree": "10010100d17300",
"assets": [],
"creationHeight": 0,
"additionalRegisters": {
  "R5": "0e42307864303761393732393334363864393133326335613261646162326535326132333030396536373938363038653437623064323632336337653365393233343633",
  "R6": "0e464272657869743a20626f746820546f727920736964657320706c617920646f776e207269736b206f66206e6f2d6465616c20616674657220627573696e65737320616c61726d",
  "R8": "0e45d094d0b8d0b2d0b8d0b4d0b5d0bdd0b4d18b20d0a7d0a2d09fd09720d0b2d18bd180d0b0d181d182d183d18220d0bdd0b02033332520d0bdd0b020d0b0d0bad186d0b8d18e",
  "R7": "0e54e8bfb0e8af84efbc9ae5b9b3e8a1a1e38081e68c81e7bbade38081e58c85e5aeb9e28094e28094e696b0e697b6e4bba3e5ba94e5afb9e585a8e79083e58c96e68c91e68898e79a84e4b8ade59bbde4b98be98193",
  "R4": "0e4030303030303030303030303030303030303031346332653265376533336435316165376536366636636362363934326333343337313237623336633333373437"
}
The code for the emission schedule can be found here

What is the team's background?#

Ergo is designed and implemented by experienced developers and researchers with publications and PhDs in cryptography, compiler theory, blockchain technology, and cryptographic e-cash. The team has a solid background in core development with cryptocurrencies and blockchain frameworks such as Nxt, Scorex and Waves. Alexander' kushti' Chepurnoy was a co-founder of smartcontract.com (now Chainlink), a core developer at NXT (The first full PoS), and one of the first employees at IOHK; he was a Research Fellow and Team Scorex Manager.

The full team can be seen on Ergo's Hall of Fame.

Discussions#

Why Proof-of-Work?#

Ergo is based on the Autolykos Proof-of-Work protocol.

Ergo was created for regular people, Proof of Work allows a truly fair start and the highest degree of decentralisation. It's widely studied, has very high-security guarantees and is friendly to light clients meaning you can use the blockchain without third parties.

These are all essential for having useful contractual, programmable money that's ready today.

Why Scala?#

Ergo's primary language is Scala. Similarly, the scripting language used by Ergo, ErgoScript, is also based on Scala, but the off-chain code can be written in any language. Developers have access to a growing selection of tools and Software Development Kits (SDKs) for JVM, Rust and JS/TS.

What about energy consumption?#

Why was non-outsourceability turned off?#

Autolykos v1 originally had non-outsourceability built-in to prevent mining pools on Ergo. However, it became apparent that it's only possible to avoid pools with smart contracts. So, they (the miners) turned it off so that not only larger players could take advantage of the loophole. Ergo is now focusing on memory hardness to keep mining as fair as possible, which should help prevent ASICs mining at least. There are also some improvements for pooling, e.g. Stratum 2 protocol.

"Bypassing Non-Outsourceable Proof-of-Work Schemes Using Collateralized Smart Contracts" was presented by Alex Chepurnoy at the WTSC workshop associated with Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2020 in Malaysia {.is-info}

  • It's also discussed here on 'Unblocked with Robert Kornacki' (14:45)

Mining pools have certain benefits just now being exposed by Ergo, like more equitable token distribution for dApps/ projects. This is now available to miners on GETBLOK.io, using the world's first working SmartPools/subpooling system.

What about 51% Attacks?#

Mining pools offer a buffer against network attacks as the hash rate is distributed across thousands of individual miners.

The memory hardened aspect of ergo also makes this attack vector more expensive as there is no ASIC support to rent. With the collective rentable rigs, there are more viable paths to a 51% attack. In theory, someone could build a massive GPU farm to try to launch such an attack. If a bad actor can rent a warehouse of ASIC and mine on a small chain with 51% attacks is a viable option.

Usually, this attack is made for profit, and massive dumping occurs on an exchange as it is occurring. The attacker will dump tokens on a business and then "double-spend" them back into their wallet. The current exchange situation doesn't provide the liquidity for a viable offramp, and the rentable ASIC support isn't an option.

Other coins like Ethereum classic are a bad comparisons, as they shared the same mining algorithm as Eth. One could buy more than 100% of the hash rate of eth classic on NiceHash, and it's not the same case for Ergo. Ergo also believes in the 'Good Miner' principle; in the case of Bitcoin - it was a good thing 51% existed.

How fast is Ergo?#

TPS (Transactions Per Second) is not a useful metric. On Ergo Reference Node v.5, TPS is estimated to be a minimum of 47.5 tx/s. However, transactions can happen in three scaling layers or levels: - L0: Ergo Reference Nodes, which can be bootstrapped using NiPoPoWs proofs and UTXO set snapshots. - L1: Ergo has extensions that allow for a wide variety of scaling solutions such as Sharding, Hydra, or BitcoinNG-style macroblocks. - L2 (off-chain): Ergo should be compatible with the Lightning Network, Rainbow Network, and many more. The implementation here will depend on the needs of the applications being built on Ergo.

The general idea is that many transactions can happen in L1 or L2 and these transactions can be bundled and settled on the L0 layer of the Ergo blockchain using a single transaction. Thanks to the high flexibility of ErgoScript programming model, many different protocols are possible, each one solving scalability problem in a specific domain (like simple payment transactions). Ergo blockchain can be thought as common settlement layer for many L1/L2 protocols and applications.

See the scaling page for more information.

Is Proof of Useful Work being considered?#

While Proof of Useful Work is an interesting idea, it is still in its research phase. Ergo is open to implementing new ideas. But, a radical change to its concensus mechanism that requires a hard fork would likely be outside the scope and resources of Ergo's small core development team and limited budget.

How can I stake my Erg?#

Ergo is a PoW (Proof of Work) coin, not a PoS (Proof of Stake), which means that blocks are validated by miners, not by stakes; therefore, you can't stake Erg directly.

However, it is possible to earn some yield from your ERG in combination with Ergo in liquidity pools, tokenisation of dApps, trading bots, lending platforms, and other mechanisms.

You can 'stake' native tokens on Ergo in some form (on ergopad.io live, Night Owl Casino soon, ErgoMixer soon,+ more)

For more info on earning off your Erg, look at the Yield guide.

EIPs#

What is Ergo's approach to Forking?#

  • Velvet-Fork: Only requires a minority of nodes to upgrade. Introduced by the NiPoPoW paper, the key idea is that you can use the scheme even if only some blocks in the chain include the interlink structure and allows for "gradual deployment" without harming the miners that haven't upgraded to the new rules. In this way, it acts similar to a soft fork in that clients that upgrade to new rules are still compatible with those that don't.
  • Soft-fork's require some nodes to upgrade. Our recent re-emission Soft-Fork EIP37 was possible as it's enforced on miner nodes only via protocol rules. These can be approved with 90% support from miners.
  • Hard-Fork Requires all nodes to upgrade.

Ergo follows a soft-forkability approach --- if a supermajority (90%+) of the network accepts a new feature, it is activated; however, old nodes that do not upgrade continue to operate normally and skip over this feature validation. Disruptive hard forks should be avoided in Ergo unless critical.

EIP-0027#

With the updated emission schedule described, re-emission (with 3 ERG re-emission rewards per block) would be enough for 4,566,336 blocks (~17.38 years).

EIP-0037#

The original Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm for Ergo worked well in most cases, including huge price drops, 100x initial difficulty misestimation during mainnet launch, and so on. However, the previous simplified and limitless version of the algorithm is bumpy. A big influx of mining hash rate over multiple epochs, especially with super-linear hash rate growth over time, may result in a huge difficulty spike. Similarly, a few slow epochs may cause a huge drop. Also, for dapps and other applications, it would be desirable to make difficulty readjustment more reactive (previously, readjustment takes place every 1024 blocks, and eight epochs, so about two weeks normally, are considered).

This was resolved with the EIP-37.

EIP37 is a hard fork which makes the difficulty adjustment more reactive by shortening epoch length, amplifying the weight of the last epoch and some limits on difficulty changes. The 'epoch length' is to be set to 128 blocks. It calculates the difficulty in two ways according to the past eight epochs of 128 blocks each. Then it takes an average from classic and predictive difficulties and limits the change so that the test can never be changed by more than 50% per epoch.

Broader conversations about difficulty adjustments on ergoforum