📄️ What's Chromia?
Why choose between a traditional database and a blockchain when you can have the best of both worlds? The _Relational Blockchain_ is a new architecture that combines the power and flexibility of mature database systems with blockchain's disruptive potential. Chromia is a relational blockchain platform for decentralized applications (dapps).
📄️ Chromia architecture
The integral relational database makes Chromia a full-stack decentralized development platform. This means that it includes all the layers necessary to build complete applications.
📄️ Providers
Providers are the backbone of the Chromia ecosystem. A provider is a person or organization responsible for nodes, which are physical or virtual instances of computing power.
📄️ Nodes
A node is a machine that runs blockchains. Each node has its own PostgreSQL instance and runs the Postchain node process.
📄️ Decentralized application (dapp)
A dapp is an app that runs on a blockchain network. Its back end runs on nodes and could also have a front end on some client software.
📄️ System chains
Chromia is divided into multiple blockchains to achieve horizontal scalability. In this model, each node only needs to work with data related to its corresponding blockchains. This architecture increases scalability and simplifies updates, as an update of a single blockchain does not affect others. The overall system consists of several system blockchains, which are essential for Chromia functionality as well as several dapp blockchains that are specific to particular applications.
📄️ Generic elements of the blockchain
You can visualize the structure of a Chromia blockchain with the help of the following diagram:
📄️ Consensus
Our consensus method is based on PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance) protocol. It's our custom implementation from the ground up called eBFT, a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) protocol. In PoA, rights to generate new blocks are awarded to nodes that have proven their authority. These nodes are called validator nodes, and they validate transactions and blocks.
📄️ Staking
To encourage providers to secure their nodes, they must stake Chroma tokens representing the provider's stake in the Chromia economy. The stake is used as collateral and forfeited when the provider's nodes misbehave.