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Installation

Ubuntu

Before you start

Please close your node using /terminate or CTRL+C before shutting down your machine. You can also use wget --delete-after localhost:9173/terminate --timeout 1 -t 1 from anywhere in your environment to force shutdown.

Virtual environment installation

Make sure to set your open file limit high enough:

nano /etc/security/limits.conf
root soft nofile 65535
root hard nofile 65535

Append:

fs.file-max = 100000

Then apply the settings and restart the machine.

sysctl -p
sudo reboot

You may now proceed with installation:

sysctl -w fs.file-max=65535
ulimit -n 1000000
screen -S nado
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
apt-get install python3.10-dev python3.10-venv
python3.10 -m venv nado_venv
source nado_venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
git clone https://github.com/hclivess/nado
cd nado
pip install -r requirements.txt

To go back to your screen, use screen -r nado To update your NADO installation, use

git reset --hard origin/main
git pull origin main

from the directory where you have it installed.

Windows

Before you start

When running in window console, please close your node using /terminate or CTRL+C. Never use the X in the upper right corner to avoid possible database corruption.

There is a release page in GitHub, which is periodically updated when major changes occur. The easiest way to run NADO for Windows users is to use the nado.exe binary from there.

It is also possible to install Python on Windows and run NADO directly. Command line instructions:

Direct installation

First download the master branch from GitHub and extract the archive. Run the command line as Administrator and enter the following commands:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

To run NADO, execute the following command: python3.10 nado.py

After installation, go to your browser and announce your peer to one of the nodes like this: http://127.0.0.1:9173/announce_peer?ip=207.180.203.132. For this, you should have port 9173 open so the node is accessible from the internet if you want to receive rewards. After this step, synchronization should start shortly.

GUI Wallet

You can download the official NADO wallet here or on the release page of NADO.

CLI Wallet

You can use the CLI wallet by running python3.10 linewallet.py This wallet takes arguments, which enable you to access more wallets from one place and also automate your routines. All arguments can be displayed with python3.10 linewallet.py --help, here are some examples:

--sk, <private key> Use private key, ignore default key location
--amount, <number> Amount to send
--recipient, <NADO address> Recipient address
--fee, <number> Fee to spend
--target, <number> Target block number
--auto, <any> Uses suggested fee and target block instead of asking, use any value (1)
--peers <'130.61.131.16','207.180.203.132'> Broadcasts transaction only to the supplied list of peers

Remote access

After running the node, you can access it at http://127.0.0.1:9173 from where all API calls used by the node itself are accessible. Here are some examples:

Private key storage

  • Linux: /~/nado/private/keys.dat

To view your file, you can use the following command: cat ~/nado/private/keys.dat. You may need to exit screen first using CTRL+a and then CTRL+d.

  • Windows: C:\Users\[username]\nado\private

Is there anything unique?

Yes. No mining or minting. All communication happens using a public API. Block production happens in every node at once, based on the deterministic principles of the participant addresses mixed with the blockchain state. This is possible because block production is separated from the consensual layer. It removes all the selfish miner incentives, which cause issues like transaction exclusion in traditional PoW systems.

What is NADO?

NADO is short for Tornado. It is just another blockchain written from scratch with a highly experimental consensus algorithm, which was created to provide effortless block production for all participants with a public IP address. NADO is not a classic proof-of-work blockchain like Bitcoin. Unlike most other crypto, its focus is on accessibility to rewards for everyone. It has a fully elastic reward mechanism, rewarding users only when transactions are happening on the chain. Users can burn their share of tokens in order to increase their chances of winning more rewards in the future.

What's the reason for NADO?

NADO is a take on one of the newer trends, where users do not use graphics cards or specialized hardware for mining, nor do they have to own a large portion of tokens in order to be rewarded. It is inspired by IDENA and NYZO, while attempting to bring the barrier of entry even lower than those two by not requiring solving of puzzles or highly efficient machines for users to remain in a reward distribution cycle.

Emergency measures

When the network consensus drops too low, you can take the following measures to help improve it. This trades security for quicker and less ambiguous synchronization.

wget --delete-after http://127.0.0.1:9173/force_sync_ip?ip=207.180.203.132 forces synchronization from a particular target IP, in this case 207.180.203.132. This feature turns off automatically once the network consensus rises above 80%. For Windows and UI-based environments, simply access http://127.0.0.1:9173/force_sync_ip?ip=207.180.203.132

You can enable promiscuity mode, which ignores peer trust when synchronizing. This will default the synchronization to a typical 51% scenario, which is less experimental. To set it up, go to your config file and add "promiscuous": true. Restart your node to put it into effect.

It is also possible to decrease the synchronization cascading level to a given value, like 1. You can do that by adding the following to your configuration file and restarting your node: "cascade_limit": 1. This setting will only have effect when running in non-promiscuous mode. Value represents depth of hash pools to iterate through, choosing based on trust. For example, there can be 50 nodes in state A, but there is no node with sufficient trust there, so the node goes into the second most popular hash pool, let's say 30 nodes in state B and sync from those.

Resyncing

Should you choose to wipe out your database and resync the chain from scratch, you can use the bundled script: python3.10 purge.py

What does NADO do differently?

In NADO, every user generates new blocks at the same time. This is possible because users are not rewarded for producing blocks but for keeping the network running. After generating a block and receiving a reward, chances of receiving more block rewards are temporarily lowered based on the public IP address. Every IP address can only have one block generating node. While this excludes users without public addresses, it prevents node spamming to a degree.

Sounds interesting, can you elaborate?

There are multiple cycles for every block. It starts with accepting peers and transactions directly. In the second stage, transactions and peers are stored in a buffer for the following block so that transactions can stabilize across the network. NADO prefers decentralization to efficiency, which means it exposes consensus more than the individual node, which makes it more resilient regarding SPOF but less efficient.

But is there a premise?

The premise of NADO is that users stop being interested in decentralized value distributing projects because it becomes progressively more difficult for them to join them or remain as time goes on. The main reason for users to leave is not the lack of adoption, but the mismatch between adoption, distribution and inflation. Distribution is the single one most important aspect of a cryptocurrency project as proven in the success of NANO, where no single entity was capable of obtaining a high amount of tokens through monopolizing token distribution.

  • Constant rewards are counterproductive: Users will keep running their nodes even though they are not receiving rewards in a particular moment because there is no block reward for a particular block because network activity is low. Fighting inflation is more important than hoping for users to not stop running nodes.

  • Elastic distribution was one of the key promises of Vertcoin, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies of 2014. NADO puts these promises into practice.

  • Litecoin was created as a Bitcoin with fair distribution. None of the projects mentioned above put large effort into marketing and were extremely popular nonetheless.

  • Barrier of entry is directly correlated to fairness of distribution. This is an idea on which Steve Jobs built his entire business. Removal of hassles in Apple operating systems and simplicity of their mobile devices led to widespread adoption simply because there were no hurdles to adoption.

  • Interestingly enough, some of the most successful "cryptocurrency projects" where pyramid schemes that had zero technology in them: Bitcoinnect and Onecoin. All users had to do there was to go on a website and click a button to invest money into something that did not exist. Why did they do it? Because it was easy.

  • Combining great and accessible technology with perfect distribution and effective marketing is the key to successful adoption.

Why not only use the existing projects?

  • With PoW, the problem is in the arms race.
  • With PoS, the problem is in the rising price.
  • With PoD, the problem is in the increasing difficulty to re-join mesh with more participants.

Proof of what?

Every node in the NADO ecosystem keeps track of what opinions other nodes have by sharing state checksums for current block producer pools, transaction pools, and block hash pools. Participants add credibility over time to those who share their opinions on what the state of the network is. The security principle is that any attacker needs to be connected to the network for a longer time than the legitimate nodes and postpone the attack until their network participation duration is longer than that of other nodes - to perform a 51% attack. If the legitimate nodes stay in the network longer than the attackers, it is impossible to attack.

For rewards, NADO uses a variant of PoW with a very limited input set unlike in normal PoW crypto, where it is unlimited. When producing blocks, addresses of all block producers are hashed with the block candidate. This results in a new hash, which is then compared with the block candidate. The address which has the least matching wins. Penalties from absence of burning have to be taken into consideration.

Ideal way to receive rewards (optimal mining)

User chance to be rewarded for a block is random and depends on their address. This is because of how NADO is designed, IPs are important only for users to join the network, while addresses are critical. Reason for this is that IP address management is out of reach for most users, so IP-centered system would lead to problems. Meanwhile, addresses are entirely in user control. You could mine to one address on more nodes than one, but that would effectively decrease your chance of receiving rewards. One address per node is recommended.

Burn-to-Bribe system and governance

In the beginning, all users have the same chance at receiving a reward every block. If they succeed, they are issued both tokens and a penalty. This penalty lowers chance of further finding rewards in relation to users who have not been rewarded yet, but it can be negated by burning a portion of the coins they generated or obtained otherwise.

The model is set up in 1:100 ratio, which means that 1 portion of burn negates 100 portions of penalty. Both penalty and burn are counted from the smallest unit of NADO, so the lowest penalty resolution is 0.0000000001 and the lowest burn/bribe resolution is 0.0000000100.

To prevent monopolization of reward distribution, the burn bonus is in effect only to the level of default value for the account, which means that any account can at best have a bonus of an entirely fresh address.

This system was created as an additional measure against inflation after implementation of elastic distribution and burned tokens are used for governance purposes.

To burn your NADO, send it to the following address: burn

What about security?

There are no guarantees for security of NADO, mainly because of its highly experimental character. Compared to more excluding networks like Bitcoin, security will always be lower as the main focus is on lowering the entry level for new users to make block production and rewards as inclusive as possible.

How many decimals are there and what are the units called?

1 NADO can be split into 1,000,000,000 units (0.0000000001).

Got some sci-fi tech mumbo jumbo?

  • Cryptography: Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (Ed25519)
  • Link hashing: BLAKE2b
  • Block capacity: Capped at 150KB per minute
  • Block reward: Between 0 and 0.5 depending on network usage
  • Transaction throughput: 7 raw transactions per second
  • Proof of Fidelity with aspects of majority and diversity
  • noSQL MessagePack file-based atomized database system
  • Optional MessagePack formatting in API
  • Shared block production and reward protocol
  • Periodic intervals to enforce consensus stabilization
  • Burn-to-Bribe deflationary incentive and governance
  • The logo is a vortexed version of the Impossible Toroidal Polyhedron

Related Repositories

NADO .NET SDK

https://github.com/blocksentinel/nado-dotnet-sdk

NADO Media Kit

https://github.com/hclivess/nado-media-kit

NADO Web Repository

https://github.com/hclivess/nado-web

NADO MicroWallet

https://github.com/hclivess/nado-microwallet

Where can I learn more?

https://nodeisok.com

For developers

Design philosophy

When implementing new functionalities to NADO, existing routines/loops should be used instead of instant invocation of functions. Every function should have its place in the particular routine, which is responsible for it. If such routine does not exist, create it.

Standard development rules apply. Functions should be as small and as independent as possible, responsible for small tasks after which they are named. Assignment of returns is preferred to object fungibility passed as arguments.

Synchronous loops are not allowed for multiple targets, always use the existing compounder. If you require a specific new compounder function, feel free to add it.

How to contribute

To contribute, you first have to fork this repository here on GitHub. After that, you make changes to your fork. When you are done, you can ask for a merge request to have your changes to the code accepted to the repository.

How NADO is structured

Level III

The main module is nado.py, which runs all loops and governs API endpoints.

Level II

There is a central memory element named memserver in memserver.py. Values are stored in its variables and accessed mostly by the main loops: consensus_loop.py, core_loop.py, message_loop.py and peer_loop.py. Apart from memserver, variables related to pools are stored in consensus_loop.py

Level I

Files that end in _ops.py like block_ops.py, data_ops.py, account_ops.py, transaction_ops.py and peer_ops.py handle low level operations and are populated with functions, which should be minimalistic both in length and complexity.

Parts of NADO

Block production

There are several phases in which blocks are created. First a block is constructed from data using construct_block(). Then this structure is submitted for block production in produce_block(), which consists of verify_block() with rebuild_block() for restructuring hashes of remotely received blocks and the final incorporate_block().

Transaction pool flow

Transaction, aka mempool, is divided into three levels.

  • user_tx_buffer: Where users directly submit transactions from wallets
  • tx_buffer: Where user buffer and transaction pools of other nodes are moved into
  • transaction_pool: The pool which will be incorporated into the block, transaction buffer is merged into it before block production. Transaction pools of other nodes are also merged into it.