BSV Blockchain is pleased to announce its new Mandala upgrade. The upgrade will fully unlock the BSV blockchain allowing it to dynamically scale at an exponential rate so it’s ready to meet the growing demand for trusted data.
A Mandala network is a network that forms recursively from an unbounded number of smaller networks of the same form as itself. It uses a base topology that can be stacked on top of itself allowing the network to dynamically grow and contract based on need or resource availability.
As this P2P topology gets stacked as a result of more complex and frequent interactions like what you would see in an app for example, the pattern becomes more complex and that forms another component of the network: SPV Wallets are the base P2P component at the edges of the network, overlay services form the more complex centre that are a coalescence of P2P transactions from SPV Wallets, and the network of nodes and specialised nodes that will run Teranode form the complex centre of the mandala network.
‘Put simply, BSV blockchain’s Mandala upgrade is the network topology change from a web2 client-server approach where nodes were responsible for all functions of network operation including data storage and access, in addition to their proscribed function of block ordering and transaction timestamping and ordering. With the Mandala upgrade, nodes are free to focus on being nodes with all other functionality being pushed out to an overlay service component and wallets.’ said Thomas Giacomo, Director of Utilisation at BSV Blockchain.
The full upgrade will launch later this year, with key components such as Teranode, overlay services and SPV Wallet(s) already live in public beta.
Enabling unbounded scaling and other benefits
The Mandala upgrade provides the updates and missing pieces required to open the global public blockchain up so anyone or anything can timestamp their interactions or transactions on it for fractions of a penny, continuously, with the only limit being how fast they can create and submit them: unbounded possibilities with unbounded scaling on the BSV blockchain.
‘By fostering an environment of coopetition (competition and cooperation), the network can accommodate extremely high transaction volumes required for growing demand while enabling transaction processors the opportunity to significantly increase revenue,’ said Frank Dickob, Provisioning Director at BSV Blockchain.
He added that this will help build a resilient network that’s better equipped to handle substantially higher volumes with the respective increase in total fees that will more than compensate for the progressive decrease in block subsidies.
‘The direct beneficiaries of this strengthened network will be the end users, who will enjoy very low microtransaction fees and reliable service. Overall, the time is ripe for infrastructural innovation in the transaction processing sector,’ he said.
Outside of unbounded scaling, the upgrade also comes with other benefits, said Giacomo. This includes the benefits of the small-world network of nodes at the centre of the mandala such as high connectivity and resilience. It will also be highly scalable to the extent that it can accommodate a level of transactional volume because the fees being generated by the introduction of volume, the fees nodes receive for adding new blocks to the blockchain, are invested back into their infrastructure as soon as they’re received to ensure they remain competitive with their peers.
‘The mandala upgrade is just another honing of this process. By having the centre of the network focus purely on handling the throughput, overlay services handling specificities of business needs, and light-weight, cost-effective, SPV wallets allowing people to interact with each other directly, globally, with a single click and with the immediacy that comes with electronic communication: email made mail electronic, BSV has the potential to safely and with unprecedented security and privacy protection, make all interactions electronic.’
Understanding the new upgrade
The Mandala upgrade broadly consists of three key components:
1. A core node network with Teranode
Teranode stands at the centre of the new upgrade and is responsible for keeping a global record while dealing with standardised transactions and high throughput capacity.
In February 2024, BSV Blockchain announced technical testing on Teranode, the watershed blockchain upgrade that will allow the BSV blockchain to operate at upwards of 1.1 million transactions per second (TPS).
BSV Blockchain is currently testing Teranode on a geographically distributed, two- and three-node cluster spread across North America, Europe and Asia. The goal is to push the network to achieve the maximum number of TPS without instability.
Learn more about Teranode here.
2. Overlay services and dedicated overlay networks
In computer networking, the term “Overlay” usually refers to a virtual network built on top of an existing physical network. It can provide various services such as routing, peer-to-peer networking, or distributed computing.
Some BSV apps are currently built with the expectation that they can read timestamped immutable data from the blockchain. This illusion is achieved by gathering all block data and filtering, indexing, and serving it to applications on demand – for free.
The economic reality is that this cannot be done at one million transactions per second without SPV and the division of labour. As network traffic necessarily grows, filtering and indexing all block data quickly becomes untenable.
Overlays allow the distribution of that demand across many services as well as the empowerment of individuals having ownership and agency over their own identity and personal information. This distribution of agency and demand with the ability to granularly purchase only what’s needed works together to minimise waste and provide superior service and superior quality products When you only pay for what you need, only what you need is manufactured and sold.
Overlays use SPV to ensure their data is valid, allowing applications to share a universal source of truth while limiting the cost of operation to a function of service use rather than total network volume.
3. SPV usage at the edge of the network with SPV Wallets
The open-source reference implementation SPV Wallet clarifies the state-of-the-art technical architecture of BSV wallets through its open-source, non-custodial framework, enabling seamless transaction verification and management at significantly reduced costs.
Designed for exchanges, wallet providers and businesses running BSV applications, it offers a reference implementation of simplified payment verification (SPV, section 8 of the white paper) for enhanced efficiency and security.
SPV Wallet can be used in place of the current ‘SV Node’ BSV Blockchain node software to validate transactions and make outbound payments. Accepting payments in this way is better for compliance purposes because your server communicates directly with counterparties.
Running the SPV Wallet in place of a full node leads to significant cost savings. This saving is due to the disparity between relevant transactions for the exchange, and overall network transaction volume,’ he said.
The average transactions per second settled on the BSV blockchain has been trending up rapidly for the last few years and is expected to drastically increase as we go forward. This will inevitably drive up costs for full node operators, and raise the corresponding demand for SPV Wallet solutions.
Application builders are encouraged to shift from using SV Node with mining features turned off to the SPV Wallet now as Teranode will be too expensive to run and only run by transaction processors.
