MIT Scholars Devise “Vault” Cryptocurrency, Claims It is 99% More Data-intensive Than Bitcoin

By Prashant Jha

A group of researchers in the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have published a report in the MIT news blog recently suggesting that they have come up with a new cryptocurrency called the “Vault” that is 99% less data-intensive vis-a-vis Bitcoin.

The nodes that exist to verify transactions in this case reportedly have to handle much less data compared to Bitcoin. The post said the cryptocurrency allows users to “join the network by downloading only a fraction of the total transaction data”. This interesting new innovation will be presented by the researchers at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) in February 2019.

The Vault system is made speedy and smooth by ensuring that all empty accounts are removed and the transaction verification process is applied to only the most recent data, and not eons-old transaction information. The result of the tests the new cryptocurrency was made to go through seems to have been extremely successful. The post mentions:

“In experiments, Vault reduced the bandwidth for joining its network by 99 percent compared to Bitcoin and 90 percent compared to Ethereum, which is considered one of today’s most efficient cryptocurrencies. Importantly, Vault still ensures that all nodes validate all transactions, providing tight security equal to its existing counterparts.”

The size of each block will be a maximum of 10 MB, which can handle about 10, 000 transactions in its entirety. The Vault blockchain will be based on a consensus algorithm known as the Proof of Stake (PoS) which is often considered to be far more efficient than “Proof of Work” (PoW), which the Bitcoin blockchain uses.

Derek Leung, a graduate student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and a co-author of this paper says:

“Currently there are a lot of cryptocurrencies, but they’re hitting bottlenecks related to joining the system as a new user and to storage. The broad goal here is to enable cryptocurrencies to scale well for more and more users.”

Speaking of how it imbibes greater efficiency, Leung added:

“Each shard of the network is responsible for storing a smaller slice of a big data structure, but this small slice allows users to verify transactions from all other parts of network.”

This cryptocurrency was developed on the basis of the Algorand blockchain created by an MIT Professor called Silvio Micali.There is little doubt that this is an incredible new finding that we cannot wait to find out more about.

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