A local company is looking to overcome the limitations of blockchain and decentralized networks and help other businesses harness the technology.
Richardson-based Shardus, a startup using a global team of developers to create distributed ledger software, has been building “infinitely scalable” blockchain software since its launch in 2017 and is now on track to release its technology to the public, so that others can create their own distributed networks, by the end of the year.
“We have to trust the organizations that run these centralized networks with all of our data, and in today’s world, with the fight for money, data, power, everyone has ulterior motives and it’s very hard to trust some of these institutions today,” Greg Hemmer, partnership manager at Shardus, told NTX Inno. “The whole focus is providing… the ultimate infrastructure to support decentralized applications, because most people aren’t just going to launch a decentralized network, the decentralized network is there to support the application built on top of it.”
Hemmer said other blockchain networks like Ethereum have limitations to scalability, including slow transaction processing, a transaction fee that can vary on a daily basis, as well as requiring nodes on its network to store massive amounts of data on their computers. This creates a barrier of entry to the networks with only the some of the more expensive computers being able to handle the data processing.
Shardus changes that up with an approach that it takes its name from – sharding. According to Hemmer, sharding splits up the data on a decentralized network into clusters of computers, called shards. By doing so, networks created using Shardus’ software can be easily linearly scaled, increasing the number of transactions on the network that can be handled per second, as more nodes are added to the network. It also allows nearly any computer to become a node on the network, decreasing the barrier of entry. Shardus looks at its software like the HTML coding language, which can be used by developers to create a myriad of different products.
“Anyone anywhere in the world with WiFi and some sort of computer can run a node in the network… and now it’s truly decentralized, because people all over the world can run nodes and networks built with Shardus,” Hemmer said.
Shardus’ story starts in 2011, when founder Omar Syed was looking for a potential blockchain solution to distributing universal basic income payments across the world. Through the years, the project has grown, and is expected to be ready for widespread use by the end of the year. Hemmer said there are already six organizations using Shardus to develop networks. And in 2019, the startup launched its own network using the software, called Liberdus.
Hemmer said he sees Liberdus being the “home base” for people to have on their mobile devices, where users can check their cryptocurrency wallets and send messages to others on the network. The network also allows users to vote on its parameters, including voting on initiatives to help grown and make the network more efficient.
“One of the biggest things about decentralization and the thoughts behind it is giving everyone fairness in the network and fairness in an application and have trust rather than one organization having control over everything,” Hemmer said. “With Liberdus, we want it to be a decentralized, autonomous organization where people across the world don’t need to know each other to determine what the fee is for making transactions in the network.”
Like other blockchain software, Shardus has its own token, called The Shardus Token. It was formerly called the Unblocked Ledger Token, a name taken from the original name of the Shardus project. The Shardus Token still uses the symbol ULT, and according to Shardus’ website is worth about $0.09 per token. The token is how Shardus has been funded, with developers coming onto help create the software being compensated with it. It is also how companies looking to use the software to create their own networks will get access through the technology – through purchasing a licensing agreement with the token. Private networks would send a percentage of their tokens to purchase a license, which would then be burned to increase the token’s value. Public networks created using Shardus would agree to distribute 1% of the entire network’s tokens to all other ULT holders. The token has also allowed Shardus to not take on any outside funding.
Currently, Shardus has had about 20 software developers around the globe helping out on the project, with five full-time workers at its Richardson HQ.
Hemmer said he sees Shardus and decentralized blockchain networks being a large disrupter in a number of industries, similar to the way the internet did in the mid 80s. Two of the biggest industries he noted were the finance and transportation industry. With cryptocurrency, banks could become a thing of the past, with transactions and loans taking place among users of a network. In transportation, with self-driving vehicle technology becoming more and more intelligent, Hemmer said it’s possible vehicles could communicate with one another using blockchain technology, getting rid of the need for traffic lights.
“I think we’re coming to a point where the internet is ready to evolve and advance,” Hemmer said. “I think decentralization is a great trend and our mission here at Shardus is to build the infrastructure that supports the global adoption of decentralized technology.”
