Are you a developer or visionary who has spent moments designing smart contracts or liquidity routing in the Web3 space? If yes, you have experienced the friction behind building on top of a single-leader consensus blockchain. For years, we were made to understand that the Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH) algorithms are the ultimate gold standard for blockchain scaling. However, looking deeply at happenings under the hood of legacy blockchains like Ethereum and Solana; there is a clear structural vulnerability, which we could term “the temporary dictator.”
Consensus on these legacy ecosystems operates on rotation. And for a timeline, a single node serves as the leader or block proposer. Within that period of being a leader, the single node has absolute control over block production. They could see transactions coming, selectively handpick transactions, remove others, and dictate transaction ordering. That explains the basis of the billion-dollar Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) issues.
As we explained in our overview of DMD Diamond’s Native MEV-resistant technology article, patching via external relays isn’t the fix to the underlying MEV issue. For you to build truly front-running-proof dApps, you need a blockchain (a base-layer) that natively eliminates the leader system in its entirety and not an off-chain workaround bandage. That is exactly what the DMD Diamond blockchain achieved by being the first ecosystem to successfully implement the HoneyBadgerBFT (HBBFT) at Layer 1.
Single-Proposer Slots: The Foundation of the Rigged Game
You may wonder how. Let us look at the engineering vulnerabilities of the legacy blockchain infrastructure.
- Ethereum’s MEV Auction: Ethereum operates on a single leader per slot. That leader can exploit transaction order and, hence, the entire Ethereum ecosystem has capitulated to MEV-Boost. This is because Ethereum’s core developers and validators couldn’t fix the code. They therefore accepted defeat by letting the bots win and turned it into an auction. Because of this vulnerability, private block builders are now creating predatory blocks that are full of sandwich attacks. They bribe these leaders to sign them. Ethereum protocol literally auctioned its block space to the highest bidder on the network.
- Solana’s Priority Spam: on Solana, the leader’s schedule is made public in advance. As a result, everyone, as well as the predatory arbitrage bots, can depict exactly which validator node will be the temporary dictator (the leader) for the next slot. Hence, searchers flood that specific node with transaction spam and pay a small priority fee tip to get their arbitrage processed first.
This consumes computing capacity of these network types and occasionally leads to massive network issues.
The Decentralized Cooperation: HBBFT Reality
The DMD Diamond blockchain entirely rewrites the gameplay by implementing HBBFT consensus. In contrast to a single validator dictating a block on chains like Solana, Ethereum, etc., the entire active validator set (typically 25 active validator nodes per epoch) operates as a leaderless cooperative block creator on the DMD Diamond blockchain.
No individual node can change the transaction order, remove a transaction, add transactions, or prioritize their own trade on the DMD Diamond blockchain. It is mathematically impossible by our network design for MEV and front-running attacks. To further understand our blockchain architecture in preventing MEV and front-running attacks, read more here!
The Ultimate Benefits To Your dApps
Are you a Web3 architect looking to deploy your IDO launchpad, NFT Marketplace, a DEX, a DeFi platform or a lending protocol, etc.? You should be aware that your protocol is only as secure as the substrate it sits on. If you deploy on a Layer 1 ecosystem that permits a single leader node to manipulate transaction order for profit, your dApp’s security is just an illusion.
Building on DMD Diamond’s leaderless architecture offers you immediate competitive advantages:
- True Transactions Certainty: Transactions are handled cooperatively by 25 active validator nodes in each epoch on our network. Therefore, no room for any malicious node to hold your users’ transactions hostage and front-run them. A use case you enjoy building on top of our chain is improved randomness, MEV and front-running prevention mechanics.
- Solidity Compatibility and Upgraded Security: The DMD Diamond blockchain is fully EVM-compatible. This means, with ease, you can copy-paste your audited Ethereum code or smart contracts directly onto the DMD Diamond protocol that natively protects your community from predators.
- Other Industry-first Abilities: Such as dynamic blocktimes and instant transaction finality, enhanced security and censorship resistance, fast and low-cost transactions, true decentralization, and on-chain DAO governance, amongst others. Thanks to our successful implementation of the HBBFT algorithm.
Stop building on a base-layer that legalizes users’ exploitation from now on! Move out of the leader-based chain and build or integrate with the DMD Diamond blockchain.
