New Scaling Solution Lumino: 100 tps without waiting for SegWit activation

Lumino is a new option for Bitcoin block expansion. This expansion solution can increase the Bitcoin network's transaction processing capacity per second (TPS) to 100笔without increasing block capacity or performing a hard fork.

What is Lumino

Sergio Demián Lerner, co-founder and CTO of Rootstock (RSK), is leading the project. He said Lumino is the latest approach to Bitcoin scaling. In early January, when Bitcoin hit an all-time high and everyone was watching where the price would go next, Lerner first unveiled the project. He tweeted:

I am working on a new way to increase the scalability of PoW blockchains. It can handle 5000 transactions per second (TPS) with just a home computer. It is really exciting! I will announce this project soon.

His original intention in launching this project was to make it a sidechain solution for Bitcoin in the RSK platform. At that time, a Twitter user asked him "whether this solution can be used for Bitcoin", and Lerner replied:

It is possible to deploy it in the form of a side chain. As for whether it can be deployed in the form of a hard fork or a soft fork, a lot of research work is needed to determine. Currently, RSK plans to build it into a Bitcoin side chain.

In introducing the project to Bradley Chun, CEO of Mooti, ​​a blockchain identity company, Lerner said:

It is definitely different and may look like a hub and spoke network, but the basic process is completely different.

Over the past month, Lerner has occasionally dropped some information about Lumino via Twitter. About a week ago, he said:

I am considering deploying Lumino as a soft fork. (With Lumino) Decentralized Bitcoin can complete 100 on-chain transactions per second, and the 1MB block size remains unchanged. The Lumino paper is currently under review.

Since Lerner announced the project, many people have asked him about the white paper. However, he has never publicly responded to the question, nor did he reveal the identity of the code reviewer.

100 transactions per second

Earlier this month, Lerner announced on Twitter that Lumino had successfully processed 100 transactions in under a second, having demonstrated it at the Construct blockchain developer conference in San Francisco in January. He said:

While everyone was arguing about the 2MB hard fork, we were already demonstrating the RSK sidechain’s transaction processing capacity at 100 transactions per second at the Construct conference. We were quietly changing history.

The Bitcoin network can currently process 3 to 7 transactions per second, while Lumino's transaction processing capacity is 14到33倍that of the Bitcoin network. Even if Bitcoin completes a 2MB hard fork, Lumino's transaction processing capacity will still exceed the Bitcoin network 6到14倍.

To improve the functionality of Lumino, Lerner explained that he has found a way to store all the information contained in a transaction in a small space, so that multiple transactions can be accommodated in a 1MB block. In addition, he also confirmed that the deployment of Lumino does not require the activation of Segregated Verification (SegWit). Earlier this week, he tweeted:

I used a specific pattern (not a normal pattern) to successfully compress the size of each transaction to 8 bytes, or 64 bits.

A transaction is 64 bits, which is much smaller than any transaction in the current block. Currently, in the Bitcoin network, the size of a single transaction ranges from 18 bytes (144 bits) to hundreds of bytes, and the specific size is determined by the input and output addresses contained in a transaction. Therefore, Lumino can achieve the purpose of saving block space.

Twenty thousand transactions per second?

On Saturday, Lerner proposed increasing the transaction processing capacity of Lumino, a long-term scaling solution, to 20,000 transactions per second.

I just confirmed that Lumino not only enables the functionality of the Lightning Network, but is also the best way to create 20,000 transactions per second and add 400 million users.

He added:

It would be best if Lumino could achieve the goal of confirmation within 10 seconds in the form of a Bitcoin sidechain, but it can also be deployed to the Bitcoin network as a soft fork.