Skip to main content

What's Chromia?

Chromia is a Layer-1 relational blockchain platform that allows developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (dapps) suited for mass-scale, real-world use cases. It comes with several unique benefits;

Relational blockchain​

Unlike other blockchain platforms, Chromia stores dapp data in a distributed set of relational databases that are native to the platform. This allows dapps to easily index, manipulate, and perform complex queries on data, all on-chain and without the need for additional layer-2 infrastructure.

No direct gas fees​

Instead of relying on gas fees paid by users to run individual transactions, Chromia allows dapps to implement their own revenue models that suit their desired user experience. Examples include paid subscriptions, freemium, subsidization, or paying for individual transactions where appropriate. Chromia's official protocols and code libraries make this easy, resulting in dapps with UX rivalling traditional centralized applications.

Predictable hosting fees and performance​

Chromia allows dapps to pay a predictable weekly hosting fee for a known set of resources, such as vCPU, RAM, storage, and IO. The fee model resembles traditional cloud hosting while still maintaining full decentralization. Dapps can pay automatically using revenues collected from users, thus allowing decentralized dapp governance.

Dapp chains and congestion-free scaling​

Each dapp on Chromia has its own blockchain, running in an isolated container with dedicated resources and managed by a group of nodes using eBFT consensus. Dapp chains are anchored to an overall system chain via a tree structure that secures the whole network. This architecture allows dapps to confirm transactions within around 1 second and maintain high throughput without the risk of other dapps in the network causing network congestion. Providers (Chromia's validators) add resources to the network in response to demand, allowing the network as a whole to scale horizontally.

EVM interoperability​

While not EVM compatible, Chromia comes with an extensive EVM interoperability framework that allows dapps to bridge tokens, events and other data to and from EVM chains. This means that beyond building dapps that are native to Chromia, developers have the option of building highly customizable layer-2 solutions for EVM chains using the Chromia platform.

Rell programming language​

Chromia takes a language-driven approach with Rell. This new programming language is designed explicitly for dapp development within the relational data model, making it familiar and easy for developers with existing experience to learn. Rell is concise, allowing developers to write sophisticated dapps quickly and easily.

Learn more​

Explore the following sections to learn more about Chromia's architecture and development experience. For a more in-depth understanding of the Chromia blockchain platform, refer to the Chromia White Paper.