05.1 — Balancing Generality & Specialization
Specialized blockchains are configurable at both the execution layer, and at the consensus and data layer. This granular control enables developers to make the trade-offs that optimize for any target use case.
At the execution layer, developers can opt for a virtualized transaction execution model, where business logic is structured as smart contracts and executed by a virtual machine — whether EVM or WASM-based. Alternatively, developers can opt for a native transaction execution model, where business logic execution is handled directly by the instantiation of the blockchain’s use case specification.
At the consensus and data layer, developers can configure the block creation and finality protocols, fair-ordering mechanisms, and blockchain-specific reward mechanisms according to their desired throughput, time-to-finality, and fair-ordering behavior. In the near future, UDX will be expanding its family of consensus mechanisms to address new frontiers relating to parallelism of execution and leaderless consensus.