V.systems (VSYS)

 Basics

• Is on mainnet.
• From CMC (10-4-2020):

"v.systems describes itself as a blockchain infrastructure provider with a focus on database and cloud services. With Sunny King as the lead architect, v.systems has already designed and implemented SPoS Consensus, which the team claims to be an efficient distributed consensus algorithm with resistance to 51% attacks. The network plans to operate as a cloud platform based on modular systems that can support efficient and agile development of a host of applications such as finance (DeFi), entertainment, and social network."

Token

• From CMC (10-4-2020):

"VSYS is the native currency for the v.systems blockchain platform with use cases such as transactions, staking, and minting on the network."

• Had an IEO (3-2019) and private sale (1-2018), from Messari (10-4-2020):

"A total of 5,142,858,000 VSYS were initially issued and allocated as follows:

• 35.88% was allocated to private investors
• 21% was reserved for the founding team
• 43.22% was allocated to fund the Ecosystem"

Tech

• Whitepaper on the project here and on SPoS can be read here (10-4-2020).
• From CMC (10-4-2020):

"Powered by the Supernode Proof-of-Stake (SPoS) consensus algorithm, each supernode is elected in a decentralized network according to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) principles. According to the team, it provides high-performance minting, transaction processing, and smart contract functions."

• From Messari (10-4-2020):

"The SPoS consensus model follows a Delegated Proof of Stake model in which holders of VSYS coins lease coins to elected “supernodes,” which are responsible for the minting of new blocks. Traditional Proof of Stake systems elects new nodes to mine new blocks through a pseudo-random system based on the number of tokens the node has staked. In the SPoS consensus model, block minting is performed by Supernodes that are leased coins by VSYS network participants through minting.

In order to achieve constant block interval minting, V Systems define a certain entity called minting slot. Each slot corresponds to an equal share of minting right. Thus for a potential minting participant, one must acquire the ownership of a slot in order to obtain the minting right. There are 60 minting slots defined, each corresponding to a specific second within the minute. To have the minting right at a given second, one must own the corresponding minting slot at the second. Essentially minters would take turns to mint in this system. The advantage is, should some of the supernodes stop minting for whatever reason, the impact to both system response and throughput is minimized. The local clock of each supernode is synchronized through network time protocol, to ensure the proper ordering of minting events. Back in 2009, Bitcoin chose not to depend on network time protocol for clock synchronization, so Bitcoin protocol could forgive a miner with clock-skew up to 2 hours. Generally speaking network time protocol nowadays can be regarded as essential Internet services like domain name service, so it can be reasonably assumed a high level of security. Contention of minting slot is allowed to occur freely at any time, by a challenger to the current minter on a slot chosen by the challenger. There is a relatively high contention fee as a deterrence to abuse. When a challenger issues a contention transaction, the stakes of both contender’s and current minter’s stakes are examined by the protocol to determine the winner of the contention."

• In their blog (9-4-2020) they also talk about Staking 2.0.
• From this blog post (31-12-2019):

"Four V SYSTEMS-based projects in 2019:

1. Tachyon Protocol — a decentralized internet protocol co-launched by X-VPN, which is one of the world’s largest VPN service providers and the world’s top 20 mobile app by Apple and Google with 50 million global users.
2. Home Token — a mortgage-backed stable coin project co-launched by a Fortune 500 real estate group.
3. WalkBank — a decentralized bank platform with fiat-crypto integration co-developed by a leading internet company.
4. BitHelp — a decentralized insurance project which aims to reconstruct insurance operation through blockchain technology and make it more efficient, reliable and transparent for customers and all the stakeholders."

Governance

• From Messari (10-4-2020):

"Protocol upgrade details:

1. The leader and manager signal their approval or disapproval for an improvement proposal through private and community discourse
2. The core developers get a sense for whether or not node operators and masternode will agree to upgrade their software
3. Ideally, all sides agree and the code changes are made smoothly. Everything is announced beforehand and all nodes have time to update In the case of disagreement from masternode, they have two options:
4. they can try and convince the other masternodes to act in favor of their side
5. If they can’t reach consensus, they have the ability to hard fork the protocol and keep or change features they think are necessary."

Audits

• Link (25-7-2019).

Roadmap

• The website (10-4-2020) seems old, with a roadmap that has not been updated, and does not look further than 2018. The plan was to have launched it's cloud service platform in 2018.
• Messari has a more up to date (10-4-2020) roadmap. In which it says their Cloud Service will have basic functions in 3-2020. And the same about their Blockchain Database in 9-2020. As of April, their Cloud Service is not online yet.
• However, in a blog post (31-12-2019), they claim to have launched staking 2.0, launched the Tachyon Protocol and introduced the VSYS DeFi ecosystem.

Usage

• From this blog post (31-12-2019): reached 10000 users and 'currently we have 37 supernodes'.
• It's Reddit is being posted on by the team, but has almost no comments.

Team, investors, Partnerships, etc.

Team

• Sunny King; lead architect
• Rest of the team can be found here (10-4-2020).