A Public, Blockchain-Based Distributed Smart-Contract Platform Enabling Mobile Lite Wallets Using a Proof-of-Stake Consensus Algorithm

摘要

Blockchain-enabled smart contracts that employ proof-of-stake validation for transactions, promise significant performance advantages compared to proof-of-work solutions. For broad industry adoption, other important requirements must be met in addition. For example, stable backwards-compatible smart-contract systems must automate cross-organizational information-logistics orchestration with lite mobile wallets that support the unspent transaction output (UTXO) protocol and simple payment verification (SPV) techniques. The currently leading smart-contract solution Ethereum, uses computationally expensive proof-of-work validation, is expected to hard-fork multiple times in the future and requires downloading the entire blockchain. Consequently, Ethereum smart contracts have limited utility for large industry applications. This paper fills the gap in the state of the art by presenting the Qtum smart-contract framework that allows for managing transaction headers in lite mobile wallets in addition with using a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.