GoChain (GO)

1. What is GoChain (GO)?

GoChain is a decentralized blockchain network that uses Proof of Reputation as a consensus model to support smart contracts and distributed applications. The Project aims to be the following:

• A scalable, high performance and low cost public cryptocurrency.
• A platform to build decentralized applications and theft-proof smart contracts.
• 100% compatibility with Ethereum wallets, smart contracts and other tools.
• Fast transactions and contract execution.

GoChain's primary mission is to be "10x more decentralized, 100x faster and 1,000x greener (less energy used to run the network) than Ethereum." The Project would also like to remain Ethereum compatible so that users can use GoChain without changing their code or developer tools.

Some of its key features include:

• Native GO-20 tokens, which are Ethereum compatible.
• 1,300 TPS with low gas fees achieved with 3 live nodes on mainnet.
• Proof of Reputation ("PoR") consensus model that depends on the reputation of its participants to keep the network secure.

In addition, GoChain also features:

• Authorized signers aree comprised of 50 reputable companies from multiple industries and spread out across multiples countries.
• Bad acting nodes can be voted out.
• Company and DNS verification to authorize signing nodes.

2. Network and blockchain data

2.1 Fees & rewards

Similar to ETH, users of the GoChain platform must pay transaction fees (or "gas") in GO tokens to perform transactions on the blockchain. Authorized signers will create, sign, and distribute blocks to other nodes and earn GO tokens. The rate of rewards will be 4.4% of total tokens (44MM) in year 1 and will decrease over time. The amount awarded per block will depend on the finalized block times. Block times are 5 seconds so each node is rewarded 7 tokens per signed block in the first year. There will also be small transaction fees that the authoritative node will keep for signing the block containing the transactions.

GoChain claims that current gas fees are already 7,500x cheaper than ETH's, and will remain low until capacity is maxed out.

2.2 Estimated annual growth in GO tokens

2.3 Voting Process

GoChain has implemented a two-phase voting process. For the initial rollout, the GoChain Foundation will add the first 50 signers to the authorization list. This will help ensure forced decentralization and avoid interference by any single government. Once 50 authorized signers have been established then voting control will be handed over to the signers to govern themselves. The PoA implementation repurposes several block headers to pass voting information between nodes.

2.4 Authorized Signer Selection and Verification

Initially, 50 reputable companies from different industries and countries will be chosen by the GoChain Foundation to be the authorized signers. This aligns with the PoR consensus model where a participant must have a reputation that is important enough that they would face dire consequences if they were to cheat the system–in both brand and financial terms. Most businesses would face serious consequences if they were caught cheating a financial network. Larger companies with well known, strong brands will be chosen over smaller companies with less to lose in the event of a malicious act.

GoChain will look at a variety of factors for onboarding new nodes:

• Number of years in business.
• Number of employees.
• Annual revenue.
• Brand recognition.

GoChain will then compare the potential candidate to the existing nodes as a relative comparison. As the reputation of nodes on the network increases, the threshold for becoming a new node will continue to increase as well.

Companies which operate authorized signer nodes will go through a verification process to ensure that their identity is correct. These validation steps will be automated through the use of smart contracts on the blockchain. The Proof of Authority ("PoA") implementation provides a point-in-time signer and voting state to provide full transparency to end users. Combined with the verification data stored within smart contracts, users can see what companies are running nodes. More detailed information on the verification process can be found in the GoChain whitepaper.

As of October 2018, GoChain has onboarded only 11 out of the 50 targeted authorized signers. Below is a list of the current companies signing blocks.

2.5 Transaction speed and block data

GoChain ran a live load test in March 2018 and achieved an average transaction speed of ~1,354 TPS with 3 live nodes.

Statistics can be found here.

3. Economics and supply

GO token ecosystem

GO tokens are paid out as transaction fees to trusted nodes run by up to 50 authorized signers who create, sign, and distribute blocks to other nodes. A list of authorized signers is maintained on the blockchain and they are rewarded with GO tokens for each signed block.

3.2 Token supply distribution

A total of 20,484 ETH (~$12MM) was raised in private and public token sales, representing 51% of all tokens

• Team was allocated 10% of the total tokens issued. Tokens began unlocking in October 2018, vesting quarterly.
• Advisors were allocated 6% of the total tokens issued. Tokens began unlocking in October 2018 with an initial unlock of 30MM tokens, then vesting semi-annually starting February 2019.
• Token Treasury make up 10% of issued tokens and are reserve tokens used to fund the company going forward (to be unlocked May 2018).
• Marketing & Legal expenses to be covered by 14% of total tokens issued. These have been unlocked and will be used on an as-needed basis for marketing, legal and operational expenses.
• GoChain Fund makes up remaining 10% total tokens issued. The fund will be used to strategically invest in companies that decide to build their dApps on GoChain.

GO token release distribution (%)

Public token sale

• Public Pre-sale in Apr 2018: 146MM GO sold for 6,740 ETH at an average exchange rate of 21,690 GO = 1 ETH.
• Public Sale in May 2018: 26MM GO sold for 1,300 ETH at an average exchange rate of 20,000 GO = 1 ETH.
• ~17% of total tokens were issued during the public sale.

Private token sale

• Conducted from Feb 2018 to Apr 2018 and reached soft cap of 65MM GO at a rate of 26,000 GO = 1 ETH, raising 2,500 ETH (~$1.3MM) at ~$0.02 per token.
• Full private sale beyond soft cap was 338MM GO, sold for 12,443 ETH at a rate of 27,139 GO = 1 ETH.
• Approx. 34% of total tokens were issued during the private sale.

GO token release schedule

The following chart represents the number and breakdown of all GO tokens released into circulation on a monthly basis from May 2018 (token sale date) to March 2021, at which point all GO tokens are expected to be in circulation.

GO token release schedule

3.4 Token governance and use of funds

As of October 2018, Gochain has already used approximately 50% of its ICO funds on the following activities in the ratios below:

• 10% partnerships.
• 10% funding projects.
• 60% team.
• 15% marketing.
• 5% travel and conferences.

All remaining token sales proceeds are locked in a multi-sig cold wallet which requires both the team's and their lawyers' keys to access.

4. Roadmap, updates, and business development

4.1 Communicated vs. completed milestones

GoChain has hit the milestones that they originally set out in the ICO, the most significant of which was launching their mainnet launch in May 2018. GoChain's latest focus has been on rewriting the storage engine to support a much larger blockchain in order to better support more data.

The next major change on the project's roadmap for this year is upgradeable smart contracts. A key security issue with the Ethereum network is the lack of theft prevention measures — GoChain aims to reduce the chance of theft from bugs, by equipping smart contracts with the ability to pause a contract (stop the theft) and upgrade it (fix the bug that made the theft possible). Read more on the upgradeable smart contracts proposal here.

The team has continuously worked on stability and performance improvements with a target of hitting 13,000 TPS in 2019.

4.2 Commercial partnership and business development progress

As GoChain's success largely revolves around its ability to drive adoption to its platform, the project has been very active in closing key commercial and strategic partnerships. This progress includes:

• Two upcoming middleware projects built on GoChain:
  • Media Protocol: An open source blockchain protocol that gives brands visibility about how consumers interact and share content.
  • Esprezzo: Tools for developers to build data-rich, cryptographically-secure on-chain apps without prior blockchain experience.
• Four ICOs announced - the following teams will accept a mix of ETH and GO for contributions, while distributions will all be in GO-20 tokens, native to GoChain:Solaster, Veritoken, Etherprise, and Job.com.
• Partnerships & GO token integrations with wallets & aggregators such as Trust Wallet, Primablock, MyEtherWallet, & Blockfolio.
  • Partnered with MB Technology, an ICO advisory firm led by GoChain advisor MB Technology, to bring at least $500m in ICOs to the GoChain platform over the next 12 months (from July 2018).
• Member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance
  • Attracting developers to build dApps on GoChain by sponsoring hackathons (BuildETH in San Francisco for example), with plans to sponsor additional events that align with GoChain's vision.

The GoChain team will not receive any tokens from projects that choose to conduct an ICO using the GoChain platform. However, team members are free to become advisors on projects as they see fit, as long as they are transparent and the roles do not conflict directly with GoChain.

5. Project team

6. GoChain's activity and community overview

6.1 Development activity

The GoChain team has made significant technical progress as highlighted within each of these repositories.

Additionally, key public repositories have documentation in Github, as well as in the separate documentation repository.

6.2 Social and community data

Strategy

GoChain's primary strategy to grow its community is to drive adoption through dApps that are built on GoChain.

Its current community activity is globally distributed, with a concentration in Asia and Europe.

Social media channels

Telegram (English)
Telegram (Chinese)
Telegram (Dutch)
Medium
Twitter
Facebook
Reddit

7. Appendix

Advisors

• Benn Godenzi (Marketing Advisor at WanChain)
• Chad Arimura (VP Cloud at Oracle)
• Morgan Mackles (VP Sales at X.ai)
• Etiënne VantKruys (EU Biz Dev at WanChain)
• Dr. Majid Almansouri (CEO at ChainVisory)
• Shihab Ali (CSO at HODL Partners)
• Matthew Skinner (Founder at SolutionBase)
• Jameson Stafford (VP Corporate Development at Catalytic, Inc.)
• Alex Barrett (Founder and CEO at Likemoji)
• Bill Macaitis (Ex-CMO at Zendesk and Slack)
• David R. Koenig (Founder (b)right governance & Author of Governance Reimagined)
• Marie Gonazelez (Social Marketing Advisor)