What Is Ultiledger (ULT)?
Ultiledger The demand for privacy in digital communications and transactions is ever increasing. User data is being collected, processed, and traded at unprecedented levels. Everything from a users browsing data and email contents, to credit score and spending habits, are gathered and sold between the worlds largest corporations and state level actors. Loki aims to provide a censorship-resistant suite of tools that will allow users to transact and communicate in private. Bitcoin came with the promise of privacy, but what has resulted is more traceability than ever.
Companies like Chainalysis and BlockSeer have taken advantage of Bitcoin’s transparent blockchain architecture to track and follow specific transactions [1]. Loki is built off Monero, a cryptocurrency that has established itself as one of the most secure and private transaction networks to date [2]. However, they recognise that Monero has inherent drawbacks. Monero transactions are orders of magnitude larger than Bitcoin transactions, with significant bandwidth, processing, and disk space requirements.
Ultiledger Storage Key Points
| Coin Basic | Information |
|---|---|
| Coin Name | Ultiledger |
| Short Name | ULT |
| Circulating Supply | 2.84B ULT |
| Total Supply | 4,500,000,000 |
| Source Code | Click Here To View Source Code |
| Explorers | Click Here To View Explorers |
| Twitter Page | Click Here To Visit Twitter Group |
| Whitepaper | Click Here To View |
| Support | 24/7 |
| Official Project Website | Click Here To Visit Project Website |
Stealth Addresses
Ultiledger Loki makes use of stealth addresses to ensure that the true public key of the receiver is never linked to their transaction. Every time a Loki transaction is sent, a one-time stealth address is created and the funds are sent to this address. Using a Diffie-Hellman key exchange, the receiver of the transaction is able to calculate a private spend key for this stealth address, thereby taking ownership of the funds without having to reveal their true public address [8]. Stealth addresses provide protection to receivers of transactions and are a core privacy feature in Loki.
RingCT
Ultiledger was first proposed by the Monero Research Lab as a way to obfuscate transaction amounts [9]. Current deployments of RingCT use range proofs, which leverage Pedersen commitments to prove that the amount of a transaction being sent is between 0 and 264. This range ensures that only non-negative amounts of currency are sent, without revealing the actual amount sent in the transaction.
Recently a number of cryptocurrencies have proposed implementing bulletproofs as a replacement to traditional range proofs in RingCT because of the significant reduction in transaction size [10]. Loki will utilise bulletproofs, reducing the information that nodes are required to store and relay, thereby improving scalability.
Service Nodes
Although Loki implements novel changes on top of the Crypto Note protocol (see 7), much of Loki’s networking functionality and scalability is enabled by a set of incentivised nodes called Service Nodes. To operate a Service Node, an operator time-locks a significant amount of Loki and provides a minimum level of bandwidth and storage to the network. In return for their services, Loki Service Node operators receive a portion of the block reward from each block. The resulting network provides market-based resistance to Sybil attacks, addressing a range of problems with existing mix nets and privacy-centric services.
Ultiledger This resistance is based on supply and demand interactions which help prevent single actors from having a large enough stake in Loki to have a significant negative impact on the second-layer privacy services Loki provides. DASH first theorised that Sybil attack resistant networks can be derived from crypto economics [11]. As an attacker accumulates Loki, the circulating supply decreases, in turn applying demand-side pressure, driving the price of Loki up. As this continues, it becomes increasingly costly for additional Loki to be purchased, making the attack prohibitively expensive.
Service Node Reward
Ultiledger The second output in each block (50% of total reward) goes to a Service Node, or two Service Nodes if a relay is selected (see 6.3). Service Nodes are rewarded based on the time since they last received a reward (or time since they registered), with a preference for nodes that have been waiting longer. Each time a Service Node registers with the network it assumes the last position in the queue.
If the Service Node maintains good service and is not ejected from the queue by a swarm flag (see 7.3), it slowly migrates to the higher positions in the queue. Nodes at or near the front of the queue are eligible for a reward, and once awarded, the node again drops to the last position in the queue and begins slowly working its way back up.