What is a DAG? Overview of Vite and Perlin (Part 1)

Is it possible to reinvent blockchain? We know that Blockchain 2.0 is ethereum someone says about 3.0, but I haven't seen stunning success of such projects yet.

Today it will be not so much about projects, but about the technology that can change our perception of cryptocurrency. And this is a DAG.

A DAG (directed acyclic graph) is a focused graph that does not have directional loops.

Most of all I hate complex definitions, so now I will tell you easily and understandably. So that even grandma then explain. On the net I did not find an explanation that I would like.

I think that with the word "directional" everything is clear, from the first to the second, from the second to the third and so on. "Acyclic" means that the last block is not connected with the first one. "Graph" is a collection of objects with links between them, for example, airports of the world and flights of planes.

The DAG looks like this:

The most understandable picture, of all that found. This is the principle of IOTA. We'll talk about him again.

In a DAG, each transaction is confirmed by a few previous transactions. But it's not blockchain! Yes, that's right, Blockchain's not here. The idea is not new, DAG is used in programming when building different models. For example:

What about the blocks? No blocks, there are transactions.

It turns out, if there are no blocks, then mining is not needed? Yes, it is. The DAG does not need to spend resources on mining because each subsequent transaction is a block that is responsible for maintaining the sequence. Everything is immediately placed in the network.

The main question. Is it a revolution? And yes, and no.

There are networks with huge speed (more than 1000 transactions per second), small commissions and not requiring mining. Many remember how the crypt kittens trashed Ethereum so that the commissions of ether jumped to unprecedented heights, and transactions were all day long, there will be no such.

The queue from the transactions waiting to be included in the block grew, and the owners of the Cats were willing to pay the commission 20 times more than usual, so that their transactions received a higher priority and passed first. This forced the rest of the network Ethereum to swear dirty and also raise the price of gas in transactions.

When something new appears, I hear enthusiastic exclamations from everyone: "Revolution! It hasn't happened yet! This is the best I've seen! "However, where are the majority of such projects now?

Continuation of the article in the next part