The Hashchain Protocol
Key Features
- Gasless Intermediate Transactions: All payments between channel opening and closing occur off-chain while remaining cryptographically verifiable.
- Scalable & High-Throughput: Only the first and last transactions are recorded on-chain, reducing congestion and cost.
- Trustless & Transparent: Smart contract logic ensures automatic and fair fund distribution based on transaction activity.
- Versatile & Adaptive: Supports use cases beyond payments, including subscriptions, access control, and tokenized services.
Architecture Components
The protocol consists of the following core components:
- Escrow Smart Contract: Holds funds securely and releases them programmatically based on hash verification.
- Trust Anchor: The cryptographic root of the hash chain, ensuring sequential verification.
- Proportional Fund Release Mechanism: Ensures that payments are made fairly by verifying the submitted token through iterative hashing.
- Participants:
- User: Deposits funds, generates the hash chain, and conducts off-chain transactions.
- Merchant: Provides services and submits the final hash token for fund redemption.
- Smart Contract: Verifies transactions and releases funds accordingly.
Workflow
- Channel Setup: The user deposits funds into the smart contract and commits a trust anchor.
- Off-Chain Token Exchange: Payments occur off-chain by exchanging hash tokens sequentially.
- Finalization & Redemption: The merchant submits the latest hash token for verification, and the smart contract calculates and releases funds accordingly.
- Channel Closure: Once the transaction is finalized, the remaining funds are refunded to the user, and the channel is closed.
By combining cryptographic security with efficient off-chain interactions, the Hashchain Protocol provides a robust solution for scalable decentralized transactions.