A reading from the book of rooster:
If you’ve heard about PHONON but only know the hype, (P2P, Off-Chain, DEX, TOR) or if this is your first introduction to crypto, blockchains, and how it all works, stay tuned and let’s get you started.
Priors:
Cash value is a meme. The paper your grandparents handed to their grocer, the coins you might have used as a kid to buy sunflower seeds and bubblegum…they’re only really worth what you can get in exchange for them. We like cash because it’s easy to swap and carry, but in a pinch cash can’t quench your thirst or fend off the barbaric hordes.
We don’t like cash because they keep making more of it, increasing the supply of money that competes for the same amount of goods and services. This inflation of the money supply causes prices to rise, and if mismanaged for long enough, empires to fall.
Bitcoin value is also a meme. Instead of passing around a paper token that’s only real physical value is to be burned, bitcoin passes around unique digital tokens that are proof some measure of computing power has been burned. Because bitcoin’s total supply is known and set in stone, when it comes to storing value it beats cash hands down.
When it comes to swapping value, bitcoin comes out far behind. Cash travels from hand to hand easily, discreetly, and with a solid enough assurance that the cash is real.
For bitcoin, or ethereum, or any other blockchain to change hands, the transaction must be authorized by a secret private key and validated by the network. This takes time, and each transaction competes for limited computing and network bandwidth. The public record of all the transactions ever performed is known as the blockchain, and years of development have gone into streamlining the transaction process within the inherent limitations of the system.
Phonon:
Beneath all public blockchains, and all of the layer 2 shapeshifting and sidechaining, is a relatively straightforward private key/public key architecture that lets you prove to the world that you hold a specific, hopefully unique private key. I say hopefully because if someone manages to copy your private key, they get all the same access you have, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. The code is the law.
Phonon begins with a question…what if instead of using the private key to make a transfer on the blockchain, we just transferred the private key itself? We get around all of the network congestion, and can do transactions for free and almost instantly, but the other party might still have a copy of the key, and be able to move those funds.
After years of development and testing, the Phonon protocol can provably swap private keys without any counterparty risk. A key is created in secret, encased in a file that can only be opened once, and is imprinted with the public address that private key unlocks. Phones and smartcards that are Phonon-certified can now pass that key around offline as often as they’d like. When they want to take the value out of Phonon, they break the phonon and use the key inside to send the value to their own account. This all happens in the secure software environment that has been certified by the smartcard/eSIM manufacturer to be in compliance with the Phonon Protocol.
Phonon brings crypto to life.
Instead of suffering network fees and confirmation times, phonon protocol lets all the security of the blockchain live comfortably in your pocket, on hardware you already use. Transactions are peer to peer, never broadcast. Phonon is the unstoppable future of payments, and that’s just the tip of the spear.