What is RChain (RHOC) | Beginner’s Guide

What is RChain?

Current blockchain platforms have inspired a new decentralized world, but their designs are littered with scalability, speed, and safety problems. These underlying architecture flaws will ultimately hinder the success and adoption of legacy blockchain platforms. Aware of these pressing issues, the RChain team came together in 2016 to build a better blockchain architecture.

 

RChain’s Better Design

RChain’s design has significant advantages over other blockchain competitors:

1. Speed- RChain’s architecture should allow it to easily accommodate tens of thousands of transactions per second. RChain plans to launch with the capacity to handle 40,000 transactions per second eventually improving towards its goal of 100,000 transactions per second.
2. Tools- The developer tools that will come along with the RChain platform are unmatchable by current market offerings. RChain plans to offer a platform that easily allows developers of different backgrounds and coding languages to easily connect their apps and products to its blockchain.
3. RChain Cooperative- The co-op is a public group made up of RChain’s developers, investors, and users. It allows its members to develop and access RChain’s open source blockchain.  Creating a community atmosphere, the co-op gives every member the ability to influence the future of the platform.
4. Trust–  RChain will enable developers worldwide to create safe and tamper proof decentralized solutions that are both scalable and fast.

The RChain Cooperative

The RChain Cooperative is a one of kind blockchain development and governance community. Its members control, own, and develop the open-source RChain platform. Based in Seattle, Washington, the co-op creates a formally organized rule-based community that many blockchain platforms lack.

Anyone can join Cooperative but members must pay a one-time membership fee of $20 dollars to join. This low price was chosen to allow people from all financial backgrounds to help create the future of RChain.

Joining the RChain Cooperative provides its members multiple benefits:

• Access to all of RChain’s Discord channels
• Ability to elect Board Members
• Lets members participate in governance committees
• Allows members to vote on project approval and budget allocations.

Cooperative Governance

Each Cooperative members receive one vote regardless of how many tokens they own.

The Cooperative has a Board of Directors made of nine seats. Different Board seats have term lengths:

3 Year Board Director Seats- Greg Meredith, Vlad Zamfir, Ian Bloom

2 Year Board Director Seats- Kenny Rowe, Evan Jensen, Alexander Bulkin

1 Year Board Director Seats- Navneet Suman, Hendrik Jan Hibolling, David Currin

 

How Does RChain Work?

RChain’s architecture was designed after a branch of mathematics called mobile process calculi in an effort to maximize the platform’s scalability.

The platform can support multiple blockchains, both public and private even on the same node. The blockchains are secured through Proof of Stake consensus protocol.

For more detailed information, head over to the whitepaper and architecture documentation.

Rho Virtual Machine Environment

At the center of the platform, the Rho Virtual Machine Execution Environment allows RChain’s applications to achieve incredible speed and scalability.

The Rho Virtual Machine Execution Environment can run multiple Rho Virtual Machines all at the same time. When necessary, The Rho Virtual Machine simply creates new instances of Rho Virtual Machines to handle the new load.

RChain has a “multi-chain” structure that allows its blockchains to run coordinated and parallel. Each virtual machine will execute an independent set of smart contracts on an independent set of blockchains and networks only when necessary.

Lightweight and multithreaded by design, nodes can handle multiple high-performance instances allowing RChain’s decentralized applications to achieve revolutionary results.

Smart Contracts

On RChain, smart contracts are written in Rholang. Rholang stands for reflective higher-order language. The language supports internal concurrent programming. It makes contracts fast and versatile by design.

Secure and correct by construction, the platform’s smart contracts follow a formal verification method that allows them to be highly scalable. The Rho Virtual Machine then compiles and executesthe contracts.

Namespaces

Unlike most blockchains that use public keys to distinguish virtual address spaces, RChain divides its virtual address space into namespaces.  In the simplest terms, a namespace is a set of named channels that are used to communicate the location of a network resource.

Namespaces allow smart contracts on one blockchain to be visible to system contracts elsewhere on the network. Namespace developers can also use tools and properties to improve system encryption and protocols.

RChain’s Private Token Sale

RChain had a private token sale that started on August 29th, 2017 and sold out in less than two weeks. It quickly hit its hard cap $15 million.

RHOC tokens first sold at the price of 20 cents per token. The token sale didn’t have a maximum purchase limit. It did, however, have a minimum purchase amount of $50,000.

All RHOC tokens will convert to REV tokens at a 1:1 ratio upon mainnet launch.

Future ICO

RChain will maybe announce an ICO. with the launch of its Mercury platform towards the end of this year. The Board must vote first of all before the ICO can happen. Therefore, if the board and cooperative decide to hold an ICO, it will likely take place at the end of this year with the launch of its Mercury platform.

RHOC Token Quick Facts

• Initial Sale Price: $0.20
• Current Market Price: $2.05
• Token Type: ERC-20
• Available Supply – 358,732,436
• Maximum Supply- 861,185,194
• Mineable- No
• Consensus Algorithm: Proof of Stake

Trading

First sold at the price of $0.20 per token, RHOC tokens have provided monstrous returns for Private Token Sale participants. After the token sale, RHOC’s price slowly trended upward for several months until it’s price moonshot over $2.00 at the start of the new year.

On January 9th, 2018 RHOC’s price hit an all-time high of $2.83. Since then, RHOC’s price has gradually slid downward to its current price of $2.05.

Where to Buy RHOC?

RHOC is currently sold on four exchanges:

1. Kucoin
2. Token Store
3. EtherDelta
4. ChaoEx

How to Store RHOC?

RHOC can be stored in any ERC-20 compatible wallet, same as any other ERC-20 token. MyEtherWallet is a community favorite due to ease of use.

However, hardware wallets such as The Ledger Nano S offer the most secure method to hold cryptocurrency.

Recent News

Still in development, the initial “Mercury” version software will eventually launch in late 2018. One live, it will allow RHOC token holders to both access and use the platform. Additionally, RChain had its first governance forum this month. It seems like the foundation for how future governance of the platform would unfold.

Governance Forum

RChain’s first governance forum happened recently in Seattle from February 15th to 18th, 2018. Designed to bring the community together, the forum also provided a legitimate basis for future of the project’s governance decisions.

The Governance Forum provided members an opportunity to contribute through workshops, discussions, and presentations. RChain Cooperative Independent Director, Vlad Zamfir sums up the importance of the event:

 

Development Timeline

Quarter 1 2018- First, demonstration of Casper proof-of-stake consensus

Quarter 2 2018- Next, Alpha release. Allows developers to set up multiple nodes that demonstrate Casper and large content delivery.

Quarter 4 2018- Then, Planned platform release of “Mercury” software

For the latest information on RChain’s development, navigate over to the current Development Road Map.

Key Team Members

Greg Meredith

Meredith is the Founder of RChain, and he is Co-founder, Board Member, and President of The Cooperative. He also has over thirty years of experience with innovative technology projects.

Meredith was also the Principal Architect behind major projects for Microsoft and AT&T.

 

Ed Eykholt

CEO of RChain holdings company, Eykholt has over thirty years’ experience in the technology industry. Additionally, he is a Co-founder and Board Member of the Cooperative.

In the past, Eykholt has led multiple full-scale projects with companies that include Microsoft and Alstom Grid. Eykholt also founded LivelyGig in 2015.

Kenny Rowe

Both a Board Member and the Chief Operating Officer, Rowe has a background in blockchain governance and community building. Additionally, he serves as head of operations at MakerDAO and is a senior consultant at Coin Fund.

 

Evan Jensen

Jensen serves as Secretary and acts as General Council. He originally received his J.D. and Master in Law from Seattle University. Most noteworthy, Jensen is an expert in crypto-related law.

 

Lisa Rice

Rice is Chief Financial Officer of both the Cooperative and RChain Holdings. She has over twenty years of finance experience. This includes accounting, financial planning, and corporate treasury.

 

Conclusion

RChain may solve many of blockchain’s speed, safety, and scalability issues. The founders ultimately believe their platform will provide a foundation for the future of blockchain and decentralized app development.