Introducing Game-Changing Interoperable Smart Contracts & dApps!
The past year has seen massive change in the World. The way we looked at things before 2020 has been forever changed by the pandemic. One of the direct results has been Central Governments printing money to prop up economies hard-hit by job losses and productivity downturns. The massive increase in national debts has increased the attention of individual investors, and hedge funds alike, on cryptocurrencies, and the current bull run is evidence of this growing focus. Two things are clearer than ever — crypto provides a hedge against the negatives of continually printing fiat money, and decentralization within the crypto-world is becoming increasingly important as concerns about centralized systems grow. The Tixl Project has pinpointed the areas of greatest demand and see fully interoperable Smart Contracts and dApps as the way of the future — existing business models need to change or be reinvented. We are on the cutting edge of giving people the tools to do this!
Building the Foundation
We have made fantastic progress in software development over recent weeks and months. At the end of 2019, the proof of concept of the Autobahn Network was successfully completed and in May 2020, we prototyped the decentralized integration of the Bitcoin network. This culminated on December 6 — the most important date so far in Tixl’s young history — in the release of “Autobahn Network Mainnet v0.1”.
Autobahn SDK & Wallet
The Autobahn SDK makes it possible to use all supported functions of the Autobahn Network and opens up a world of possibilities for your own applications. The Tixl Wallet is the first product that uses the Autobahn SDK. Besides providing instant and zero-fee transactions, another brilliant feature is that users can use normal BTC addresses within the Autobahn Network. This address can also be shared with users on the Bitcoin Mainnet, charging the normal BTC transaction fees.
In addition to a native app for iOS and Android, further functions for the wallet are already being worked on to drive the adoption of the wallet — more to come on this soon!
Bitcoin & ERC20 Support
The Autobahn Network allows instant and free transactions for all tokens of the connected networks (minimal transaction fees will apply in the future). After the Bitcoin Mainnet was fully connected with the launch that happened in December, we have made great progress toward the integration of ERC20 tokens. We expect to start internal testing already over the coming weeks. Once ERC20 tokens are connected, a huge technical milestone will have been reached for the Autobahn Network, allowing it to be used as an interoperable scaling solution for the most important crypto assets.
With this accomplished, the most important milestones for our vision for the coming years will have been achieved. With typical German attention-to-detail, we have — so far — focused quite deliberately solely on the core development of the Autobahn Network, and have not yet talked about what is planned to build on top of it. We have always believed that the foundation needs to be rock-solid for what stands above it.
Today we want to share with everybody what is to come after Step 3 in our visionary roadmap for Tixl’s Autobahn Network and the whole Tixl Ecosystem.
Interoperable Smart Contracts & dApps
Very Soon, in Step 4, we will offer developers the option to build fully interoperable Smart Contracts and dApps for Tixl’s minimum-fee, high speed, interoperable Autobahn Network. These Smart Contracts can also be called from any connected platform, i.e. Bitcoin, Ethereum, BSC or, Polkadot.
This decentralized code execution platform will not be integrated into the Autobahn Network core itself but, instead, be perfectly connected via the SDK. Thus, the dApps have no impact on the performance of the Autobahn Network and the complexity of the products is cleanly decapsulated. We are calling the secondary network the “Autobahn dApplication Network”.
How does it work?
First of all, we need to define a “Smart Contract”. According to Wikipedia, “A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement.” That means that Smart Contracts do not have to be EVM based Solidity scripts and, instead, they are generally about automated execution of contractual relationships between the interacting parties. So we took a step back and asked ourselves, “is the current model already perfect?” From our point of view, it is a long way from perfect. We strongly believe that having a Smart Contract engine integrated into a payment settlement system is not the right approach. That is why the Autobahn dApplication Network will work differently.
Ours will have its own validator network to run the code in a decentralized manner and find consensus on the outcome. We will make use of an existing Proof of Stake (with the TXL token) consensus algorithm so that we can reduce the implementation efforts for our team. Compared to Ethereum, one cannot simply deploy Smart Contracts to the network without them being explicitly rolled out by the validator network. On the one hand, this is a drawback with our system but, on the other hand, this allows for higher quality applications and spam protection of the network. Also, there is a crypto project out there that has already demonstrated that a selective approach of integrating new logic works well and still allows decentralization: Chainlink. So, our Smart Contract network is comparable to today’s oracle networks — where new oracle sources or nodes are not deployed every few seconds to the network.
How does it connect to the Autobahn Network?
Each node in the separate Autobahn dApplication Network needs to have one or more accounts on the Autobahn Network. For each dApp (set of one or more Smart Contracts) that is deployed to the Autobahn dApplication Network, one or more additional accounts on the Autobahn Network will be created. Each dApplication validator node will maintain its own keys. The newly-formed accounts are created in such a way that they are set up to only support transactions with multi-signatures mapping to the TXL staking levels of the validator nodes. When the staking amounts are changing for nodes, the Autobahn Network wallets will be updated so that transactions can only be made if enough of the dApplication validator nodes are signing the transaction. Details of this process will be explained in a later article together with some graphics and, very soon, brought to life with a prototype running the first Autobahn dApp!
What does that mean for other networks?
Our approach is not limited to the Autobahn Network but will work for all networks supporting multi-signature accounts. However, due to the unique properties of the Autobahn Network we will focus our development there first.
Multi-Language Support
We decided to take a completely new approach to enable the writing of smart contracts. One of the biggest hurdles currently facing developers is that very few are familiar with Solidity. We believe that it should be possible for any developer to develop smart contracts in their preferred programming language. The ability to connect with the networks, such as the Autobahn network, will be provided by SDKs for the languages.
What can be developed?
Our Smart Contract solution allows for any type of application and is not limited to specific use-cases. We expect to see the following use-cases implemented by the community first:
- Token creations depending on the functionality of the attached networks
- Swap and exchange protocols
- Token lock & staking concepts
- NFTs and blockchain-based games
Why fully interoperable Smart Contracts will be a Game Changer
The crypto world today is seeing growing numbers of networks integrate, or develop, their own Smart Contract execution engines. This leads to an ecosystem where there are many different types of dApps running in different networks. Increasingly, developers of a dApp want it to run in different networks at the same time and also with the same underlying token model. In situations where all involved networks support the EVM, these developers can usually deploy their existing Ethereum Smart Contract code to these networks and then simply use it. Even in a favorable scenario, they still need a bridge to transport their own tokens to the other network.
There is, however, a large drawback with this solution that applies to many dApps. Let us take Uniswap for example. The Uniswap dApp can easily be deployed to other EVM based networks, such as e.g. Binance Smart Chain. However, the liquidity which exists on the Ethereum Network cannot easily be used on the Binance Smart Chain side. With our chain agnostic architecture, one could deploy some DEX dApp, similar to Uniswap, into our Smart Contract validator network, and let it use the liquidity cross-chain e.g. from Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and the Autobahn Network.
Competing with Polkadot? Yes and No.
Polkadot’s approach to interoperability works with interconnected chains that can share information (e.g. tokens) across them. It also provides bridges to other networks so that information can even be shared from, and into, Polkadot’s chains.
With our solution, we are building something similar. Everything is interconnected, however not with parachains, but within one high-performance network. So yes, in a way we are competing with Polkadot in terms of a very innovative approach. But — on the other hand — no, as we are providing a Smart Contract execution environment that can also work for all Polkadot projects.
Use Cases for interoperable dApps
With the ability to create interoperable dApps, the possibilities for applications on the Autobahn Network are almost limitless. Just to name a few that are tied to the Tixl Vision roadmap:
Cross-Chain liquidity Pools (DEX)
Once these Smart Contracts are available, anyone could build a DEX with cross-chain liquidity pools. If Tixl had cross-chain liquidity pools for its interoperable Autobahn Network, users would be able to swap all tokens in a decentralized way, with super-low fees.
Yield Optimization & Locked Tokens
Yield optimization has also become an important topic in the crypto-world in recent months. Accordingly, various services have been developed for this purpose and, in addition to already established products such as yearn, further providers like YOP are in the starting blocks this year. An Autobahn dApp could make use of these services. Imagine a dApp that you can use to utilize such services…
Example: You send some of your BTC to this dApp and these are used for yield optimization. You receive the same amount of a locked token in return e.g. “yBTC”. You cannot use this token to send it back to the Bitcoin mainnet but you can send it to friends on the Autobahn to ensure liquidity in case of any doubt. The earnings are split between all yBTC holders.
Another example is ETH2.0 staking. You need 32 ETH to participate in the Ethereum staking. Autobahn users can “collect” ETHs until it reaches the required amount of 32 ETH. Users get “yETH” in return.
These y-Tokens can be used on the Autobahn Network, but it is also possible to create them as usual ERC20 tokens.
Tixl Pay & PoS
With a Swap DEX connected to Tixl’s Autobahn Network in the background, we can offer smart payment solutions because the seller of goods, or the recipient of amounts, can be offered the option to automatically swap into another currency and thus have no volatility or currency risk, for example, through a stablecoin.
Various approaches can be taken on this basis:
- Point of Sale payments using NFC
- Autobahn Credit Cards
- An easy-to-use plugin for Online Shops
- QR code payments
- Metamask Integration or a similar approach
The merchants could save a huge amount of transaction costs and optimize their margins accordingly. Today’s problems — like frozen merchant accounts at Paypal, would be a thing of the past because the entire process would be completely decentralized.
Any other Payment & Banking Solution
We will also challenge the major business models of traditional banking in a decentralized way — using the Tixl Autobahn Network as a settlement layer.
Beyond the Horizon
The Tixl Team has never believed in “normal”.
We started this article talking about the changes we’ve all seen over the past year, changes that have affected us all, changes that no one imagined. For us, these changes have helped shape our thinking — we must imagine changes, we have to think about the times that lie ahead and the challenges and opportunities they will bring. Covid has shown us that the World is a small place, that we are all connected — that we all need to be connected, and to be able to work together.
Money and business will never be the same. One of the keys to success in the future is the ability to interconnect systems and processes, and the creativity of talented developers should no longer be limited by an inability to connect environments. With our interoperable Smart Contracts & dApps, the sky’s the limit.
With the foundations firmly built — it is time to spread our wings and take the project to the next level. With you, we look forward to creating opportunities beyond the horizon.
