Linera

Linera is bringing web2 performance and reliability to web3, the first low-latency blockchain that will scale as easily as a web2 application. Blockchains have historically excelled in use cases where censorship resistance was the most important function. Yet, a growing number of applications also require low latency — that is, predictably low confirmation times in response to user actions. Such use cases include, for instance: retail payments, micro-payments for gaming apps, proprietary trading, and bridges between blockchains. Unfortunately, confirmation times in the fastest blockchains still typically take a number of seconds due to the overhead of mempools and complex coordination between validators. The FastPay and Zef academic work to has shown that simple operations such as payments can be greatly accelerated by removing mempools altogether and minimizing interactions between validators. In this family of protocols, blockchain clients communicate directly with validators to submit and confirm new account operations. The Linera blockchain aims to generalize this approach and take it to production, enabling most account-based operations to be confirmed in a fraction of a second.