A new blockchain-type network, dubbed ‘Conflux’, has sealed $35 M in funding from big-name investors that include Sequoia Capital and high-profile tech and venture capital firms IMO Ventures, FreesFund, Rong 360, Shunwei Capital, F2Pool, and major crypto exchange Huobi. The funding was raised for the non-profit Conflux Foundation, that will use the proceeds to support the development of the network and expand its 10-person development team.
The network was developed by a group of university professors and researchers from the University of Toronto and China’s Tsinghua University, including Dr. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, a Turing Award recipient, an annual $1 M prize given to a person that has exceeded in the field of computer science. Conflux has been designed to tackle what is perceived to be blockchain’s biggest hurdle – scalability, proclaiming its new testnet to be capable of processing “at least 6,500 transactions per second, while supporting at least 20,000 nodes.”
Fellow co-founder Fan Long explains: “We’ve changed the structure of the blockchain so that it’s no longer a chain in the sense that it records each block based on what its parent block says.” This is achieved by using a topologically ordered system, in which different types of transactions run on different chains in the network simultaneously. Conflux combines this system with a proof-of-work consensus algorithm, and also allows network users to run smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps) on the network. According to Long, Conflux will release its testnet by the end of February 2019, and its main network by 3Q 2019.
