Universa (UTN), the blockchain 3.0

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Basic information

To begin this review we like to start with a Q&A we found with the CEO of Universa. What interested us the most was his vision for Universa. The interviewer asked:

What do you think is the biggest problem Universa will solve in the blockchain sector and why is it important to solve it?

On which he answered:

With its incredibly low cost and high transaction speed, Universa will help the network economy make a huge leap from the middle ages, so to speak, to the industrial economy. You could say this is an industrial revolution for smart contract and e-payments, and that’s where Universa intends to become one of the leaders. (1)

Universa is claiming they are the next generation blockchain. They founded Universa because they thought the current blockchains are broken, so they came with a solution. Universa is focused on business, tokenization and smart contracts. Unlike bitcoin there is no mining in Universa. The network participants are only rewarded for validating transactions and execution of smart contracts no matter what your equipment is. They claim that the transactions in the Universa protocol are 1000x faster and 100x cheaper than the most popular blockchain operators (Bitcoin and Ethereum). By only storing the hash-of-the-state of the final balance, rather than a full accounting of all ten-thousand transactions and the balances of all user accounts, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, they can accomplish this statement.

Universa is a blockchain protocol for creating your apps and blockchains. It uses a contract execution machine and distributed state ledger designed to improve on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Execution of smart contract actions requires transaction fees paid in UTN to reward participating nodes for the processing power they supply to the network and sustain the ongoing development of the Universa platform. Nodes will keep 80% of the transaction fee, and 20% will go to Universa Corporation. Universa will hold the right to “burn” each day up to 1% of the fees retained by the platform.

Universa provides eventually, either at launch time or shortly thereafter, use cases for different kind of smart contracts in the Universa Platform.

- Common tokens

This one is according to the Whitepaper the most basic example of use of smart contracts. The contract will define actions to check the balance of a wallet and transfer tokens to another wallet. More advanced tokens might contain functions for minting new tokens, burning existing supplies, freezing or locking trading activities of accounts and issuing authorizations for spending by an intermediary party.

- Bank-backed tokens

For example, a contract might define a token and support an integration with an US bank account and define a function ‘’SellTokensToFiat’’ which accepts that defined coins to be burned and triggers an outgoing wire to the corresponding bank account. This would also work the other way around. In that case the tokens would be minted. 

The latest development in this area was with USDTether. There was a whole fuss about the tether and Bitfinex story. Read it here for an impression on the story: (2)

- Invoice contracts

For example, you are the boss of any offline services firm, and you would like to receive payments for your service instantly after delivery and with small transaction expenses. You create a smart contract with all documentation in appendix and conditions, and stipulate that your customer should send defined tokens as remuneration; the contract can be defined to specifically forward the assets directly to the manager's account, or to your accounts receivable department. When your workers provide delivery, your staff ask the customer to provide his digital signature for that action to a terminal and the transaction will be executed immediately. This action can even be made offline and registered on the network later. 

If necessary, before signing the contract you can send its body to each other for negotiations, but when one side signs it with official digital signature it becomes an immutable document, and another side will be able only to sign the completely same contract or not to sign that contract at all.

- Escrow contracts

A smart contract can be defined to provide a trustless escrow lock of a two-party transaction to release a trade when both sides have posted their payments. In this way, the exchange can facilitate crypto-to-crypto trades, or even integrate e with a stock broker service to allow other kinds of securities to be traded, using UTN, fiat, or another digital asset as payment.

- Digital Autonomous Organization Contracts (DAO)

A smart contract could be created, which describes a proposition in a legal document. This contract could be sent to the involved people. Participants launch the contract, prove their identity and rights to vote with their digital signature and vote. After the votes count up to an enough number of contracts, the proposition could be started.

We could have companies without CEOs or hierarchy. The uses for such an infrastructure are tremendous in scale. If regulatory structures permit, blockchain data could replace many public records like birth certificates, marriage certificates, deeds, mortgages, titles, sex offender records and missing persons. Healthcare clinics can function autonomously, cab companies can control a fleet of driverless cabs, a software development company can employ thousands of independent programmers. The list is quite large and a DAO model can be applied to almost any business.

The idea behind DAO companies is that the rules upon which the company functions are enforced digitally. Other decisions are made by shareholders who control a certain amount of the tokens, or smart contracts, who can vote for decisions.

Participation of all shareholders is a problem. Just like in the real world, a lack of voting participation has been documented.

Another hardship that arises is the difficulty of changing the code of a DAO or the smart contracts once deployed in the blockchain. On one hand, this is good because one single entity cannot change the rules, but the disadvantage is that debugging cannot be done. (3)

Sources

(1) : https://www.chipin.com/universa-ceo-alexander-borodich-interview/ 

(2) : https://hackernoon.com/the-curious-tale-of-tethers-6b0031eead87

(3) : https://medium.com/universablockchain/decentralized-autonomous-organization-what-is-a-dao-company-eb99e472f23e

https://universa.io/files/whitepaper.pdf?v=1.1

Meet the Boss | Interview with Universa CEO Alexander Borodich

Meet the Boss - Our Exclusive Interview Series - This time we speak to Universa CEO Alexander Borodich about the Blockchain, speed, and their current ICO.

Partnerships

- ApexFree

ApexFree is a platform for end-to-end integration and integration of software products, technologies, services, robots and solutions to obtain synergies from their joint use and automation of business processes in the provision of professional services. ApexFree has made $7 Million investment in Universa. As a part of agreement, ApexFree Platform Services will integrate with the Universa Blockchain Platform solution. (1)

- Blockchain Aero

Blockchain aero is a consortium which develops, manufactures, provides and puts in operation the 4-seater and 2-seater urban aerial vehicles for the air taxi market. Blockchain technology will be used to make its flights available to holders of McFly tokens. Universa will develop the core technology behind the Internet of Things for the mass urban flight systems management. (2)

- SilentNotary

SilentNotary is a digital notary that saves and certifies documents, emails, chats, and audio- and video recordings while securing authenticity using blockchain technology. Protect and secure your interests by certifying data using SilentNotary: A huge step forward in the world of fast-moving decision-making, saving us time, energy, and money. SilentNotary is an Ethereum-based platform and Universa will be adopted as the 2nd platform creating additional possibilities. (3)

- McAfee coin

Delivers the next maturity level in getting funding by blending the proven power of the blockchain ICO with the increasing sophistication of AI and crowd participation systems, our platform raises the bar by providing an unprecedented level of support to fledgling start-ups and the increasing odds of success. John McAfee became project advisor and will be using the blockchain for his project. (4)

Sources

(1): http://firrma.ru/data/news/80363/

(2): https://blockchain.aero/

https://mcfly.aero/

(3): https://silentnotary.com/

(4): https://www.mcafeecoin.com/