Introducing Scintilla

Scintilla represents a rethink of traditional blockchain technology to position assets as first-class, native citizens of a single secure, decentralized, multi-asset blockchain.

Traditional currencies like Bitcoin achieve this with a single native asset in a secure but slow fashion, and Web 3.0 technologies like Ethereum achieve this non-natively through additional complexity that is slow and expensive to compute and store.

By combining the best of both worlds in a new thought paradigm, Scintilla provides an opinionated optimization that's economical, scalable and can satisfy the needs of the emerging Web 4.0 era, where any kind of actor can interact economically with any kind of asset in a low friction, low complexity, low cost decentralized environment.

Scintillas mission is to achieve a mass-scale internet of money where any actor can hold, exchange, share, transfer and monetize any kind of property, currency or asset on a single globally-decentralized blockchain, in an easy to use and economically scalable way.

Whether you're developing innovative dApps, issuing digital tokens, or seeking to innovate new blockchain solutions for business and enterprise, Scintilla provides the tools and infrastructure necessary to bring your ideas to life.

Architecture

At the heart of Scintilla is a core ledger, a multi-asset blockchain supporting a network of community-driven metachains, all inter-connected via a secure network Mesh that provides interoperability and discovery of services within the network.

The core blockchain is provided by a Validator network that uses a PoS consensus over a 10-minute block-time similar to Bitcoin's model, but that also certifies pre-commits from a sub-chain mined using PoW with a 5-second block-time, combining high-security for high-liquidity actions with high-frequency and performance for smaller actions.

The core blockchain also supports native self-sovereign Identities, that provide built-in identity verification linked to user wallets, promoting regulatory compliance while protecting personal data, and enabling nuanced permission controls for decentralized applications (dApps), and native 'pay-to-name' type actions.

Fully integrated Decentralized Governance is also an intrinsic property of Scintilla, with the network supporting DAOs as first-class citizens on the blockchain, with full community decision making and funding from block rewards for adding value to the Scintilla network.

Scintilla Currency (SCT)

Scintilla treats all assets and identities as equal, allowing payments and other forms of economic activity in any accepted currency or asset.

But 'central' to this concept is the SCT token itself. Implemented as an asset type on the core ledger, but required at the consensus protocol level for all native incentive transactions from fees to royalties, acts as the underlying digital currency providing underlying value and liquidity for the rest of the Scintilla decentralized economy.

SCT tokens are therefore intrinsic and pivotal to the network's incentive model, serving multiple key functions such as:

• Consensus Participation: SCT tokens are used to participate in the network's consensus mechanism, with token holders being able to stake their tokens as a form of security and governance participation.
• Transaction Fees: Transactions on the network require SCT tokens as fees, which are used to compensate validators and secure the network.
• Governance: SCT token holders have governance rights, allowing them to vote on key network decisions and influence the direction of the Scintilla Network's development.

Implementation

In implementation terms, all chains are implemented as modules, with the underlying ledger, and subsequent identity, precommit and mesh chains implemented as core (consensus) modules, and metachains implemented as community modules with their own choice of consesus mechanism (which will be implemeted using Smart Script and Smart Data as per the roadmap).

This provides a fully modular architecture for developers to easily improve and innovate on Scintilla, as well as seemless upgrade processes without the needs for hard or soft forks.

Apart from the usage of a selection of mature core crypto libraries, and implementation of the Cosmos address scheme, Scintilla's functionality has been coded entirely for Scintilla's goals from the ground-up, without forks or SDK usage, to provide a streamlined and optimized codebase to build on without legacy or redundant code, to achieve Scintilla's mission in a clean and forward-focused way.

Launch & Distribution

Scintilla launches in 2024 without presale or VC, with only a 2.2% initial distribution for airdrop (0.2%) and future community incentives (2%).

Scintilla launch has been pre-announced on Twitter and the Scintilla.network site since February 2024, allowing anyone to learn about Scintilla and join the airdrop via the Discord.

Emission follows a model of Epochs where there is a 8% reduction every 28 epochs (roughly 28 days) over 90 years, with long term incentives effectivly minted via burning of existing supply for certain network actions such as governance.

Scintilla has a max supply of SCT 100,000,000.

Scintilla Philosophy

Scintilla embodies a distinct vision for the future of a more interactive and decentralized internet:

1. Our community is united by the conviction that transactions, data, and interactions should be plentiful and freely accessible.

2. We advocate for a world where users have the autonomy to both offer and utilize applications without the oversight of central authorities, devoid of constraints, and minus the necessity for trust.

3. By facilitating transactions at nearly zero cost, we open the door to widespread participation in the network.

4. By allowing anyone to join Metachains to the network, given at least one validator's support, we pave the way for limitless and permissionless innovation.

5. By simplifying the process for anyone to generate tokens, establish DAOs, their governance structures, and digital identities, we're crafting the foundations for a new, more open, transparent, and equitable internet.

6. By fostering the creation of reputations within a trustless framework, linked to an automated budget system, we ensure the network's ability to self-regulate and evolve autonomously as long as it remains operational.

7. Scintilla is a decentralized, open-source, scalable, permisionless, anti-fragile protocol that takes a positive stance on data and computation abundance.

8. All aspects of Scintilla must assume full interoperation between both human and non-human actors, paving the way for financially-embodied AI to provide economic agency that can add value to Scintilla's network.

Inception & Team

Scintilla was founded in 2024, written from the ground-up and launched by Alex Werner & Andy Freer, both key contributors to the Dash cryptocurrency, that innovated pivotal concepts such as decentralized governance, DAOs and proof-of-service nodes (such as Validators and Masternodes) and together represent a combined 25 years experience innovating within the crypto space.

Support and Community Engagement

If you have any questions, feedback, or need assistance, please feel free to reach out to us at [integrations@scintilla.network], where we can assist you in the integration process and provide guidance on how to best utilize the Scintilla Network. You should also join the discussion on our Discord (opens in a new tab).