A comprehensive understanding of Chromia: a data-centric Layer1 platform

Overview

Chromia is a data-centric Layer 1 platform that aims to optimize and achieve high-performance AI and gaming applications through horizontal scaling to handle parallel tasks.

Chromia will launch its Mainnet in early Q3 2024 and has recently integrated with AI-driven gaming studio Ultiverse.

Applications built on Chromia will run as sidechains, and the database-centric approach of Chromia is well-suited for applications that require complex queries and indexing.

Project Introduction

As the Gas fees of Ethereum continue to rise, various Layer 1 alternative solutions with scalability optimization as the goal continue to emerge. Chromia uses relational databases to achieve efficient data storage and retrieval, making it a differentiated competitive point.

Just as Ethereum addresses its shortcomings through a modular approach, the design space for Layer 1 alternatives has also significantly expanded. The integration and modular strategy provide a variety of choices for functionality and performance for application and developers. Chromia positions itself as a data querying platform for modular blockchain, attracting game and AI projects through intensive data processing and computing capabilities.

Project Background

Chromia was created by Chromaway, a Swedish company, in 2019. The founding team of Chromaway has a strong background in the encryption field and has been involved in related areas since the birth of Bitcoin, including Or Perelman, Henrik Hjelte, and Alex Mizrahi. Mizrahi made early contributions to the concept of PoS Consensus Mechanism and colored coins.

Former Defiance Capital head Yeou Jie Goh recently joined the Chromia team as the head of Asia Pacific.

Chromia's financing in 2019 was led by Arrington Capital, while the seed round in 2018 was led by TGE Capital. All private sales and investor tokens have been released.

Technology

Chromia separates the settlement layer and the execution layer to achieve modularity, using a relational database as the information storage structure, while Ethereum uses the account model.

Postchains

Postchains are the most important innovation in Chromia's design. The Postchains design is used to store data in a relational database, including Block chain metadata and application state. Additionally, they allow a single database to host a long Block chain and permit one Block chain to access the data of another Block chain after data submission. This approach allows for convenient querying of shared data among chains to simplify interactions between Block chains, thus reducing complexity.

ICMF and ICCF

Chromia sends data between chains through two protocols ICMF (Interchain Message Passing Facility) and ICCF (Interchain Confirmation Facility).

ICMF uses the anchor hierarchy Cross-Chain Interaction to send messages and facilitate various internal Cross-Chain Interaction communications, including managing application updates. It supports publishing messages from one chain to a topic and then allows other chains to subscribe to any message on that specific topic. ICMF uses the anchor hierarchy as a communication channel, ensuring the final delivery and order of messages, enabling chains to communicate even in different clusters.

ICCF also uses an anchoring hierarchy, but is not responsible for sending messages, but for constructing transaction proofs. After the construction is completed, the proof is submitted to the receiving blockchain by the client, and the receiving blockchain verifies it using the anchoring structure. Although ICCF is faster and more efficient, it requires client interaction, and the client may encounter failure issues. In this case, ICCF needs to recreate and resubmit the proof. ICCF proof is used for Cross-Chain Interaction transfer, implemented in Chromia's FT 4 Token standard.

Both of these allow developers to use PostgreSQL for data storage and querying to optimize the development process. The traditional Virtual Machine architecture is incompatible with Chromia's relational data model because it requires encoding queries. To address this issue, Chromia adopts the relational language Rell for programming. Rell is designed similar to Python and Kotlin, aiming to reduce the learning curve for developers and facilitate adoption and transition.

Consensus

Each application on Chromia has its own blockchain, which is operated by a group of Nodes using eBFT. Each blockchain in Chromia is associated with a group of validators and hosted on a group of Nodes. These Nodes are responsible for achieving consensus on all modifications to the application state. Individuals or organizations can operate Nodes called Service Providers (Providers) and run Chromia software on them. Chromia currently has four clusters, where a group of network Nodes run the same blockchain. The actual throughput and scalability of the network will be determined when the Mainnet launches. The current data for the application network (appnet) is:

• Confirmation time of about 1 second;
• Each Sidechain has a TPS greater than 500;
• More than 100,000 updates and reads per second.

Chromia has already tested three clusters internally, with a TPS of about 33,000, and the team stated that the network can linearly expand with the increase of cluster numbers.

Chromia achieves horizontal scalability by dividing its architecture into long Block chains, with each Node handling data only for its designated chain. This pattern ensures that an on-chain update does not affect another chain, enhancing scalability and effectively creating a cohesive 'system' Block chain, which is at the heart of the Chromia architecture. The system chain is composed of:

• Directory Chain keeps track of all service providers, nodes, application chains, and their validators.
• The Economy Chain tracks Token distribution, only applicable to CHR.
• Anchoring Chain is used to resist attacks on some Nodes. It also records the Blockhash of other chains, which helps to detect Consensus failure issues. Chromia has a cluster Anchoring Chain that anchors all chains upstream from the original chain.

Therefore, applications built on Chromia will run as Sidechains, which is a database-centric approach suitable for applications that require complex queries and indexing. In this model, applications pay Nodes for hosting services. This setup is intended to allow developers to determine their own configuration details based on the resources allocated to their applications. Nodes, on the other hand, seek to earn fees for providing server services and are not concerned with the specific functionality of the applications. However, this approach may lead to inefficiency: the even distribution of computational resources among Nodes may result in some Nodes being underutilized while others reach their capacity limits.

Chromia solves this problem by introducing various Nodes tailored to specific needs, including application requirements, service provider capacity, and hardware availability. This flexible design allows applications to adjust hosting costs according to their unique needs. In the Chromia ecosystem, hosting costs and transactions use CHR as the standard Token.

Tokenomics

At the initial launch of the network, 1 billion CHR Tokens were created. In May 2020, 22 million tokens were destroyed, and the current total supply of tokens is 978 million 37.

The complete allocation is as follows:

• 37.25% allocated to the ecosystem.
• 25% allocated to the promotion fund.
• 19.4% is allocated to private sale investors.
• 4.5% allocated to the founders.
• 4% as initial Liquidity.
• 3% allocated to the automatic conversion contract.
• 2.93% allocated to the team.
• 2% allocated to Chromia's system Node.
• 1.92% allocated to Chromia advisors.

CHR was initially issued in the form of an ERC-20 token, and will be converted to Chromia's native token after the launch of the Chromia Mainnet. Currently, the FDV of CHR is 186 million USD, and the token price is 0.23 USD.

Unallocated Tokens include 9.4 million for founders, 57.1 million for promotions, and 16.5 million for the automatic conversion contract. The release will be activated when the Mainnet launches, with monthly unlocks until December 2024. The Chromia Token has various key functions in the Chromia ecosystem:

• DApps are used to pay hosting fees and serve as node rewards, similar to ETH paying Money Laundering to block producers;
• As the main currency in the Chromia economy.
• Users can stake CHR Token to earn rewards, promote network security, and service providers can use their stakeToken for governance.

Online Activities

Chromia requires service providers to stake CHR as collateral to incentivize them to protect the network. CHR, as collateral, will be confiscated in case of any improper behavior by the node. All users can stake Chromia Token to get an annualized governance reward of 10% (the stake interest rate may be adjusted in the future). Users can participate using wallets such as MetaMask, and staking can be done on the ETH mainnet or BNB Chain. After staking, CHR Tokens will be frozen for two weeks. In addition, all applications wishing to host on the Chromia testnet must stake at least 100 CHR.

In January 2024, the team introduced a delegation mechanism. Chromia has added new service providers to enhance the responsiveness of the stake interface. After the update, the provider list will be dynamically populated through real-time access to the directory chain, ensuring the real-time nature of potential representatives. As of the time of writing, 28% of the circulating CHR Tokens have been staked natively.

The current network is still in the Testnet phase, with seven online applications, twenty service providers, and twenty-six active Nodes. Chromia's most popular application is My Neighbor Alice, a fully chained multiplayer game that combines digital farming, Non-fungible Token trading, and community, all built entirely on Chromia. Since its launch in January 2024, My Neighbor Alice's Alpha Season 4 has completed over 1.8 million transactions.

Another application on Chromia, Fanzeal, is a digital collectibles market related to the German football team Stuttgart. It aims to bring sports and entertainment onto the chain. In addition, Chromia has collaborated with long game studios to welcome the upcoming Mainnet.

Roadmap

On the positioning level, Chromia is evolving towards the encryption gaming center. On the technical level, Chromia launched the Block Explorer, EVM cross-chain bridges in the fourth quarter of 2023, and finally confirmed its Chromia CLI to simplify the deployment of Rell-based applications.

Chromia will launch an economic chain, which is a system chain parallel to the catalog chain and anchor chain. The economic chain aims to achieve several important goals. Firstly, it will support native fee applications that allow the use of CHR Tokens to rent containers, simplifying the allocation of fees paid to network providers. In addition, the economic chain will serve as the primary channel for the official bridge, facilitating the transfer of CHR Tokens between Ethereum and BNB Chain. It also plays a crucial role in the circulation of CHR Tokens, serving as the starting point for Tokens entering the ecosystem from the Chromia side.

Before its Mainnet launch, Chromia faces two key challenges: implementing a native fee system to compensate network providers with CHR Tokens, and ultimately completing the integration of its token standard FT 4 cross-chain bridges to support native CHR transactions.

In February 2024, Chromia also announced a strategic partnership with RSTLSS, a platform that allows users to easily design personalized digital assets. The collaboration aims to make digital creation accessible to everyone. Chromia will simplify the application experience, while RSTLSS focuses on ensuring the usability of its user-generated content (UGC), extending it to users without programming experience. Enhancing the Chromia gaming ecosystem through cross-game asset sharing, intellectual property cross-licensing, and promotion of RSTLSS's innovative tools.

In addition, the integration of Chromia and Rell implements relational database query function, which helps to expand the application scope of Chromia, including AI and other aspects. In situations where most Blockchains are unable to handle a large number of computing demands, Chromia's efficient data storage and retrieval system provide developers with effective tools.

Conclusion

Based on its modular architecture principles for relational databases, Chromia aims to establish a position in Layer 1. The programming language Rell introduces data storage capabilities, which enable comprehensive on-chain data management directly on the network.

With the increasing attention to AI and gaming, Chromia Mainnet will play its role. Chromia's current Market Cap is about 1.8 billion US dollars, lagging behind Beam and ImmutableX, which are valued at 7.1 billion US dollars and 18.7 billion US dollars, respectively. Chromia will achieve its goals through more customized and grounded application integration solutions.