Introduction

The evolution of blockchain technology can be categorized into three distinct generations. The first generation, exemplified by Bitcoin and Ethereum 1.0, introduced the foundational concepts of decentralized digital currencies and smart contracts. While revolutionary, these platforms faced significant scalability issues due to their reliance on proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanisms, which are inherently resource-intensive and slow.

The second generation of blockchain technology sought to address these limitations through the introduction of proof-of-stake (PoS) chains such as Cosmos, Polkadot, and other Tendermint-based networks. These systems improved scalability and energy efficiency by shifting away from PoW. However, they still suffered from a critical limitation: the reliance on a designated leader in each consensus round or epoch. By design, a leader is nominated in each round or epoch to collect transactions, propose blocks, and drive the consensus process. This leader-centric approach often becomes a bottleneck, as the leader must collect, communicate, and drive consensus, limiting overall system scalability and efficiency. Despite these challenges, numerous successful projects have been built on Tendermint's PoS framework, including Binance Chain, Terra, Oasis Labs, IRISnet, Regen Network, Akash Network, Injective Protocol, Secret Network, Persistence, and Sentinel. While these projects have achieved significant success, they still face fundamental limitations that can be addressed by more advanced consensus mechanisms.

Scalaris represents the third generation of blockchain technology. Built on the innovative research of Narwhal and Bullshark, Scalaris eliminates the need for a leader in each consensus round, thereby overcoming the scalability bottleneck inherent in earlier systems. Unlike Aptos and Sui, which also leverage Narwhal and Bullshark, Scalaris introduces a novel mechanism for mitigating Miner Extractable Value (MEV) by randomizing the order of prior pending transactions during the commitment process. This leaderless, parallel consensus framework ensures high throughput, fault tolerance, and resilience to MEV attacks, setting Scalaris apart as a true innovator in the blockchain space. Additionally, we will introduce Mysticeti into Scalaris to achieve a performance of up to 400,000 transactions per second (TPS) and very low latency for consensus commits, around 0.5 seconds. With Scalaris, we can build superior versions of existing successful projects like Oasis Labs, Celestia, Injective Protocol, which were previously built on the second-generation PoS-based Tendermint, thereby enhancing their performance and scalability to new heights.