#3 Findora Academy đź’ź: Crossing the Chasm: Introducing Prism

Findora is a leading privacy-focused blockchain that combines an innovative hybrid of UTXO and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain technologies to enable programmable privacy. This Findora Academy article series will discuss the key concepts and technical details behind both the UTXO and account-based blockchain architectures and how they are combined to power the Findora blockchain architecture.

Maggie
Findora Foundation

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What Does Prism Do?

Prism — Bridging Findora Native Chain (UTXO) with Findora Smart Chain (EVM)

In general, most blockchains follow one of two record-keeping models: the UTXO model or the account model. Blockchains such as Bitcoin and ZCash use a UTXO model. Blockchains such as Ethereum and Polkadot use an account model. There are tradeoffs with either model. A lot of internet ink has been spilled fighting over which approach is better, but why choose one, when you can have both?

Findora integrates both models inside its chain architecture to capitalize on the advantages of each. These parallel chains are united by Prism (fka internal transfer), which allows the two chains to atomically swap tokens and work together as one without having to trust a central intermediary.

Prism (fka Internal Transfer)

FRA Tokens on Native Chain and Smart Chain (FRC-20 FRA)

FRA is the native token of the Findora blockchain.

On the native chain, the tokens are called “FRA-native tokens,” and are used for staking to guarantee network security, paying transaction fees, and voting on Findora Improvement Proposals.

On the smart chain, FRA tokens are called “FRA-smart tokens,” and are used to pay transaction fees and interact with Dapps built on the Findora EVM.

Special Note: A key innovation of the Findora’s Smart Chain is the design of the Smart Chain token which is not only a token required to pay for gas transactions on the Smart Chain but it’s also been enhanced to follow the Smart Chain’s FRC-20 standard (i.e. Findora’s version of Ethereum’s ERC-20) by default. So unlike Ethereum, which requires the ETH tokens to be wrapped into ERC-20 form before they can work on an Ethereum DEX, Findora Smart Chain tokens will work automatically on any Findora DEX without the extra step of needing to wrap the FRA tokens first.

Prism for FRA-native and FRA-smart

With Prism, users can atomically and trustlessly convert their FRA-native tokens on the native chain to FRA-smart tokens on the smart chain.

NOTE: Prism will soon support custom tokens ( i.e. any custom tokens issued on Findora native chain or Findora smart chain). Stay tuned!

Here is a general overview of how Prism works:

Native Chain -> Smart Chain

  • The transaction is built with a Transfer and Convert operation
  • The UTXO is burnt by transferring to a burn address
  • Assets are minted by adding to the owner’s balance (account specified in the transaction)
  • The transaction fees for this transaction are paid using FRA-native

Smart Chain -> Native Chain

  • Assets are burnt from the specified address by subtracting the balance
  • Minting operations are queued to be processed by the chain
  • The ledger mints UTXOs based on the amounts specified
  • The transaction fees for this transaction are paid using FRA-smart tokens

NOTE: The exact steps can be found here: wiki.findora.org/docs/dapp/wallet

Prism — Mini-Tutorial

To initiate Prism, open the Findora desktop wallet and go to the Prism section. Next, select the direction (EVM-Compatible Wallet ⇔ Native Wallet) and the amount of FRA tokens to transfer.

Prism (fka Internal Transfer) on Findora Wallet

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