Rhizom and Ethereum: competition, overlap or synergy?
By: Rhizom Foundation
Tags: Smart Contracts, Tokenized, Ethereum, Security Token, Blockchain

Comparisons are inevitable, insofar as they are the most elementary of the process we have our disposal to help us understand what is around us, especially when we tread paths still barely discovered.

This is what underpins this article, establishing parallels, since they are inescapable, but also trying to show more complementarities between approaches than establishing petty relations for the sake of it.

For instance, the form through which Rhizom is composed, as a true ecosystem that seeks its own autonomy, as well as its native protocol and subjacent layers in full synergy already makes it quite singular.

Both offer tools for development in Turing-complete blockchains, even if their purposes differ profoundly. We have, on one side, the intention of providing a platform for dApps to be developed that help creating a new internet — more globally accessible, freer and more reliable.

This clearly entices a task not at all modest and outlines the central mission to which Ethereum vows to devote itself: providing the infrastructure for developers to create their own with more autonomy and a wider array of options to do so.

Rhizom, on the other hand, departs from our effective reality, the same in which we live and our routine happens, formed by possibilities that unfold at each new challenge or problem to be solved, as well as the users’ immediate needs.

Even if Ethereum yields clear instructions, so its architecture can be seized in manifold ways. Rhizom presents additional elements and shows additional elements and further stages of its infrastructure’s possible uses from the outset.

Thus, some proprietary dApps that already exemplify practical modes of implementation and a framework ready to harbor similar platforms are essential parts of how the public will get to know it.

In nuce, the main difference lies effectively in what one proposes and the other provides. What enhances this distinction is the focus on maximum experimentation opposed to the deepened focus on solutions for the real world.

The ecosystem is developed as a safe, agile and efficient platform for commercial, intellectual, social, legal or any other usages that the new realities of the relations between individuals and objects to inevitably appear in the coming years might demand or suggest.

That being said, let’s put them side by side, shall we?

Utility Token X Security Token:

Ethereum, being a Utility Token that went through an unregulated public offer, had to let go of many of the rights the token holder could eventually claim such as: right to vote, dividends, dedicated team with committed to efforts, among others. Rhizom sought the logic of Security Tokens, one that is regulated and appropriates itself of all the advantages of securities, as opposed to the deficiencies mentioned regarding Ethereum.

14 transactions per second X +100.000 transactions per second:

Despite scalability being Ethereum’s greatest and most relevant deficiency, other projects have already surpassed this shortcoming, even if still being criticised for their vulnerability when it comes to decentralisation — Rhizom offers a more elaborate and precise answer.

Limitations caused by robust smart contracts X ability to process more robust contracts without congesting the network:

Many remember the episode of the non-fungible tokens (Cryptokitties), created within the Ethereum network, that congested it simply by being sturdier. While in the Rhizom network, through the workings of a mechanism named Jung (based on the work of Psychoanalyst and Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung referring toan alternative to the existing level of paranoia within existing networks), allows for safe scalability. Counting on that, it has the capacity of processing robust contracts in parallel.

High Fee X Zero Fee:

Yet another important handicap that Ethereum brings with it are the transaction costs which prevent mass adoption in the development of decentralised applications with a scalable business model. Rhizom, as EOS also did, brought the transaction costs to zero, however with significant difference: it does not yield inflation into the economic model, whereas EOS does, which can have severe consequences in the middle and long terms.

Wallet X Smart Wallet:

In its second layer, Ethereum has a native wallet and some others made by third parties while Rhizom boasts a proprietary wallet with many products, services and innovations attached to it — the most relevant being Zeno, a layer that facilitates user’s address search (impossible to memorise and hard to keep at hand) and allows to send to other users for recurring payments (machine x machine), salaries, etc., without the risk of loss.

Without Framework X Within Framework/SDK:

At Ethereum, everything has to be created from nothing. At Rhizom, developers can make use of several modules of its framework and speed up their development processes. This becomes evident in many of its dimensions, especially because of its composability. This is a quality that relates to the ability of composing its existing resources as construction blocks in applications of superior order in terms of trust and power. The composition ability is central as it gives room for developers to create more with less without exposing themselves to unnecessary risks, what allows them to reach faster and more complex innovations.

Exchange X Security Exchange:

Utility Tokens are listed in exchanges without the capacity for approximation and forging relationships with regulating organs. Security tokens are listed in the main stock exchanges of the globe: London, NASDAQ, SIX.

Without KYC/AML X Within KYC/AML: Conformity processes that comply with the standards set by regulations for KYC practices (know your client) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering).

The consensus

Ethereum is based on what is known as PoW (Proof of Work), that basically rests the validation of transactions upon the resolution of mathematical formulas through dispute between computers within the network.

Such method is up to now deemed efficient, even if with a few mishaps in its implementation, such as the excessive processing power (consuming enough energy to light up more than one million homes for a year) it requires and the risks implied in the centralisation inherent to its algorithm, especially what is known hypothetically as a ‘51% attack’ (when an ill-intended group takes over more than 50% of the network’s computational power).

This is the model soon to be adopted by Ethereum in a relatively natural and gradual transition, given the project’s ambitions and the future user needs that it aims to attend towards a model known as PoS (Proof of Stake). Here the competition as mining fostered in the persecution of these resolutions is replaced by validations performed by participants of the network through ‘bets’ that are done with their tokens in blocks presumed to be added to the chain, each one being rewarded after procedural tasks proportionally to the stakes placed.

PoS is well-regarded by members of the crypto community because it allows a good way to earning ‘interests’ in cryptocurrency and is an efficient alternative to PoW in decentralised ecosystems. However, it is not exempt from critiques, as there is a certain healthy skepticism towards how it would execute (or not) punitive sanctions severe enough to discourage bad behaviour.

Rhizom, by its turn, uses a custom tailored version of the so called Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), so it seeks to accelerate transactions within the creation of blocks without compromising the decentralised structure of incentives, appearing at a cutting edge stage in the recent evolution of consensus mechanisms.

However, some changes are being introduced by Rhizom for this model (DPoS) developed by Dan Larimer, initially implemented in Bitshares, later becoming more widely known through EOS’s deployment in 2018 — precisely because this invention provides greater scalability in transactions, also resulting in the impressive mark of 4 billion raised in its IPOs. But it still receives severe criticism in the fields of governance and delegation, raising serious doubts concerning its effective decentralisation. Rhizom offers more sophisticated solutions to bridge this gap.

But we are talking about the here and now and as we could observe so far, as much as Ethereum pursues solutions to crucial problems in the blockchain universe while providing a decentralised and bold platform for dApp development, it tried to learn from some of its handicaps, be it in vision or execution, and offer a complete ecosystem where developers will be more partners than guinea pigs.

This is clearly materialised in the way the ecosystem deals with the questions posed by a smart economy. It will bring forth daunting novelties such as digitised physical assets and these will carry a blockchain-based proof-of-ownership, through which they will be sold, traded and amortised via smart contracts.

Furthermore, that same economic dynamic, as innovative as it is and as ubiquitous as seems to spread, will have to deal with bureaucratic entities of many scopes — national, regional, federal, sectoral — regulating diverse spheres of interest — fiduciary, corporate, proprietary, securities-related — relevant to the circulation of values and goods in a secure manner.

This is one of the crucial points when we compare ETH and RHZ, as not only the methods differ, but also the goals can be distinguished in a very important aspect. Whereas DAOs such as the Ethereum harbors can boast having sprung a new way to exert control over transactions in the blockchain that don’t interfere in its nature or finality, they still do it from within official regulatory institutions wherever they may take place.

Granted that now many questions come to mind to everyone in need of a reliable platform upon which their dApps can be developed.

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