Temtum

temtum has set out to solve problems associated with many existing cryptocurrencies and peer-to-peer blockchain networks as a whole, where speed, scalability, security and high resource requirements limit adoption. The Temporal Blockchain, developed by Dragon Infosec, combined with temtum’s innovative Consensus Algorithms and AI powered Performance Integrity Protocol, removes network competition, improves network efficiency and uses a source of light for quantum effect randomness. Temtum's technology is a quantum secure payment coin that aims to integrate into existing payment infrastructures and exist as a standalone cryptocurrency that allows fee-less transactions.

temtum was founded by CTO Richard Dennis, along with Dr Gareth Owenson, Ginger Saltos and Cintya Aguirre. Together they set out to resolve issues inherent in peer-to-peer networks such as Open Bazaar and Bitcoin, before developing a new technology for integration with mainstream payment networks for and by ordinary people. Dennis combined theoretical mathematics and academic research to develop a blockchain technology known as Temporal, owned by Dragon Infosec and perpetually licensed to temtum. Temporal has been independently tested and deployed into a live working network.

Team members are based in the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Ecuador and Belarus.

Temporal Blockchain technology transforms the way the blockchain works by reconstructing how peer-to-peer networks scale. It claims to operate with less power, energy and storage, and processes transactions on very low-resourced devices at high speeds, with a high level of security. temtum does not need centralised pools of specialised hardware, and can be run on any device connected to the web. The company believes their technology is more accessible to more people.

And yet blockchain networks that have already been deployed have suffered from a number of downsides and concerns that have meant that they have failed to deliver on their promise and are yet to see significant adoption. Chief among these downsides are:

Resource intensity: Many leading cryptocurrencies use highly wasteful and restrictive consensus mechanisms such as proof-of-work, which require enormous energy use and have a significant environmental impact.

Speed: Many blockchain technologies, including Bitcoin, are enormously slow. Bitcoin can take 10–15 minutes per transaction which makes it thoroughly unsuitable as a mainstream form of payment. The majority of alternative high transaction technologies are not blockchains.

Security: Blockchain based cryptocurrencies’ pseudorandom generation of keys is open to exploitation by sophisticated hackers, with quantum computing increasing the likelihood of predicting software generated values.

Scalability: Current blockchain technologies are not truly scalable. They are not able to be fully decentralised and in many cases require high entry points to participate in them e.g. massive computational power.

The Temporal Blockchain eliminates the need to store the entire chain history on all nodes by locally archiving data, while preventing competition in node selection. This significantly reduces resource requirements and allows anyone with a basic form of technology – such as a smartphone user – to fully participate in the network, delivering true decentralisation and infinite scalability.

The speed of the temtum network is limited only by the hardware and bandwidth of network participants. We have created a highly efficient Consensus Algorithm and removed block size limitations in order to confirm transactions into a block extremely quickly, with a maximum confirmation time of 12 seconds. Once included in a block, a transaction is confirmed – there is no need to wait for additional blocks to be added subsequent to the initial block, as is the case with Bitcoin, due to the impossibility of a malicious fork.

temtum’s Consensus Algorithm, constructed around leader nodes and the innovative Node Participation Document, removes the need for mining and Consensus mechanisms such as proof-of-work. temtum claims to use less energy and has less environmental impact compared to POW networks. They estimate that the Bitcoin network is 16,573,693 times more expensive than the temtum network based on energy costs, assuming both networks are operating at the same size. The Bitcoin network is currently limited to a maximum transaction throughput of seven transactions per second. The average fee for a Bitcoin transaction from 2017-2018 was $57.35 – and the total cost of a Bitcoin transaction in the same time period, including miner and energy fees, was $104.701 .

Temporal is a quantum-secure blockchain network that uses a photon source for genuine random number generation alongside next-generation hashing algorithms. These prevent the network from being vulnerable to attack.

The integration of the proof-of-work consensus mechanism in Bitcoin allows all nodes that comprise the Bitcoin network to ensure they share the same copy of the distributed ledger so that it is impossible to double-spend. The proof-of-work mechanism is a method of randomly selecting the next node that will confirm previous transactions in a way that prevents the reasonable economic prediction of the next confirming node.

Proof-of-work is effective at a certain scale, but it is also extremely resource and energy-intensive, and it's claimed that it has failed to adapt to growth. One theory is that proof-of-work can only achieve payment security if mining income is high, but if that is the case, the transaction market cannot generate an adequate level of income. As a result, liquidity would deteriorate in years to come.

The temtum Consensus Algorithm, in contrast with Bitcoin, does not require intensive computational resources. It also eliminates block size limitations and implements improved network routing, which means that the temtum network can handle increasing loads as required. The only limitations governing the number of transactions per second that temtum delivers are hardware and network bandwidth.

The temtum network incorporates the Temporal Blockchain, a mechanism that allows local nodes to define themselves as 'Temporal nodes' to archive data in order to minimise storage space usage. This follows the same logic as Bitcoin in terms of establishing a timestamp network, but it does not require proof-of-work mining. Instead, although data is archived locally, the Temporal system has been designed to ensure the integrity of the blockchain – making it possible for nodes to validate previous transactions without downloading and storing the entire blockchain.

This data storage method allows low-power devices to fully participate in the temtum network and confirm transactions without requiring the resources demanded by traditional proof-of-work blockchain networks such as Bitcoin. The combination of the temtum Consensus Algorithm and Temporal technology allows the temtum network to deliver extremely high transaction throughput and short transaction confirmation times with low resource requirements.

Laboratory tests followed by a live deployment over globally distributed servers confirm a throughput of up to 120,000 transactions per second (a multiple of the peak capacity of 56,000 TPS on the VISA system).

temtum plans to deploy the live main net at the same time as coin distribution. temtum coin (TEM) is intended to be a fully operational form of payment on day one of genesis block (the first block of any blockchain).