The BSV Mandala upgrade is a strategic re-engineering of the BSV infrastructure to significantly enhance its scalability, performance and operational efficiency. Introduced as a concept for BSV in 2018, its strategic implementation is pivotal in transitioning from the existing network topology, based on monolithic integrated functional components to a more sophisticated, microservices based architecture. This change aims to reduce the operational burdens on enterprises and enable more direct and efficient interactions within the blockchain environment.
Importantly, the Mandala upgrade does not alter the existing Bitcoin protocol restored by BSV blockchain. Instead, it introduces three interconnected network components; Teranode, Overlay Services and SPV Wallets which enhance the overall system’s efficiency and functionality. By employing a microservice architecture for the node, each service specialises in a particular aspect of transaction processing while adhering to the established protocol. This design ensures seamless integration and cooperation among components, facilitated by SPV, which uses Merkle path authentication and proofs to validate transactions across their lifecycle. This approach maintains the protocol’s integrity while enabling the network to evolve into an ultra-small world mandala topology, optimising performance and scalability.
Ultra Small World core node network with Teranode
At the heart of the Mandala lies an Ultra Small World core node network of Teranodes which is crucial for delivering the network’s operational efficiency, security and speed. This central topology forms a complete graph between the Teranodes, through which they can disseminate transactional and block information rapidly and check other Teranodes block proposals immediately whilst processing millions of transactions per second.
Role of Overlay Networks
Overlay Networks expand the network’s scalability and performance by providing tailored environments for dedicated applications, from digital currencies and financial instruments to large-scale data services. These overlays enable sophisticated data access management schemes, allowing for dedicated use of public blockchain infrastructure. By doing so, they address one of the critical limitations of traditional blockchain architectures—the difficulty in managing privacy and complex interactions within a transparent system.
Integration of SPV in Overlay Networks
All overlay systems within the Mandala architecture operate dedicated Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) mechanisms, ensuring validity and scalable integration with the blockchain. Overlay services use Merkle proofs to verify the authenticity and integrity of the transactions without needing the full blockchain data. This feature ensures that each overlay network can serve data back to application with absolute certainty that it is valid, thereby enhancing their performance, scalability and efficiency.
Leveraging SPV Wallets for enhanced data management
Overlay Service can be used as access control systems, or to manage state within a shared context:
- Tokenisation and Access Control: By associating data and access tokens with specific UTXOs, overlay networks can implement detailed access controls and permissions, linking them directly to the blockchain transactions. This integration ensures that all state changes—whether occurring within payment channels or recorded on the blockchain via micropayments—are securely logged and verifiable.
- Micropayment-Driven State Changes: For actions that need to be recorded on the blockchain, the Mandala architecture facilitates the logging of these transactions through extremely low-cost micropayments (ranging from 0.01 to 0.001 cents). This system allows for economical and efficient transaction logging, making it feasible to record numerous small transactions without prohibitive costs.
Harnessing the UTXO model as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)
The Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) set, encompassing past and present transactions, inherently forms a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Each transaction in the blockchain references UTXOs as inputs and creates new UTXOs as outputs, linking transactions in a forward-only direction, with no cycles due to inputs being as outputs of previous transactions, and a linear progression of block additions. This DAG structure is not merely a feature of the blockchain but is foundational to how data integrity and transaction dependencies are managed across the network.
The Paradigm of private permissioned capabilities on a public permissionless blockchain
Dedicated use of a public blockchain involves leveraging the public infrastructure for secure, controlled access to data verification capabilities, integrating transparency with privacy and operational control. This approach is vital for businesses that require confidentiality and specific control over their interactions on the blockchain. It allows for the creation of dedicated subsets of transactions and data that are of interest to a specific and agreed set of applications, using public attestations that act as data check valves for information flows and significantly enhance the auditability of a system.
Application scenarios
In the Mandala architecture, businesses can utilise dedicated ledgers within overlay networks to manage their data securely. These ledgers maintain a private state but interact seamlessly with the public blockchain through transactions that are verified by the broader network, including through SPV wallets. This setup not only ensures the security and immutability offered by the public blockchain but also provides the flexibility and privacy of private databases, effectively supporting sophisticated business applications like triple-entry accounting and complex data access schemes.
This detailed structure of the Mandala upgrade illustrates a deliberate move towards a more dynamic and capable blockchain architecture that supports the evolving needs of the digital economy, emphasising efficiency, scalability, and strategic data management.
Advanced Data Structures and interoperability in the Mandala architecture
The Mandala architecture, with its overlay networks, represents a groundbreaking shift in how blockchain can be leveraged for sophisticated data management and novel applications. By using transactions as carriers for recording state changes to internal systems on the overlay, the architecture opens up possibilities for implementing sophisticated data access schemes and hierarchical structures using Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs).
Integration of DAGs with transaction systems
Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) are valuable in various scientific and computational fields, including epidemiology, citation networks, and scheduling algorithms. In the context of the Mandala architecture, transactions can be structured to mimic DAG properties, allowing for efficient, scalable, and flexible management of data dependencies and hierarchies. This is particularly effective in environments where data lineage, version control, and detailed audit trails are crucial.
Transactions in the Mandala architecture can serve dual purposes—not only do they perform the traditional role of transferring value, but they also act as markers or checkpoints in the complex webs of data relationships maintained within the overlay networks. By structuring these transactions to reflect DAG properties, overlays can implement inherent versioning systems built around Merkle DAGs, where each node in the DAG represents a piece of data or a state change, linked cryptographically through transactions.
Utilising Digital Signatures for data integrity
Digital signatures play a crucial role in this architecture, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of transactions and by extension, the data changes they record. Each transaction, signed with the sender’s private key, guarantees that the data changes or accesses are authorised and untampered. This mechanism not only secures data transactions but also embeds a robust versioning system directly into the data structure, facilitating complex data retrieval and historical analysis.
Performance and interoperability of Overlay Networks
Overlay networks in the Mandala architecture become highly performant and interoperable subsets of the broader blockchain. They are linked by Merkle paths, which ensure that data integrity and transaction validity are maintained without the overhead of processing the full blockchain. This link facilitates the quick verification of transactions across overlays, harnessing the instant payment capabilities of BSV to log all actions on the overlay’s data systems efficiently.
This innovative use of blockchain transactions to support DAG-based data structures enhances both the functionality and the scope of blockchain applications. It enables the overlays to function as dynamic, self-contained ecosystems that are both secure and easy to integrate with other systems, leveraging blockchain’s inherent strengths to provide solutions that are not only scalable but also inherently compliant with complex data governance frameworks.
Future Directions
As these technologies evolve, the potential applications of DAG-integrated transaction systems in blockchain will expand. This could revolutionise fields that rely heavily on complex data structures and require robust, transparent, and immutable records—ranging from scientific research and healthcare to supply chain management and beyond.
Call to Action
The Mandala architecture’s innovative approach offers a glimpse into the future of blockchain technology, where data complexity and volume are no longer barriers but opportunities for innovation. Stakeholders in technology, finance, and data-intensive industries are encouraged to explore how the Mandala architecture and its Teranode, Overlays and SPV implementations can transform their operations and data strategies, unlocking new levels of efficiency and data utility.
