* By Starcoin Community, inspirations from Starcoin core developer, Hugo. 

Why is Starcoin valuable?

Starcoin, A New Generation of Layered Smart Contract And Distrbuted Financial Network. There are great innovations in Starcoin, such as:

• Layered
• Smart Contract
• Distributed Finance
• New Generation

1. Layer 1

   As you might be aware, the first layer is public blockchain if you have some knowledge about blockchain technology. From a technical standpoint, there are many delicate designs in Starcoin, including, enhanced PoW consensus, billable state, bootstrap economic model, unbeatable on-chain governance DAO, scalable standard library Stdlib, the new generation of smart contract language Move. All these designs make Starcoin is valuable.

   Here are some examples to demonstrate Starcoin’s value.

   • Example 1. Enhanced PoW Consensus: On-chain value belongs to everyone in the blockchain, not only particular one person. To serve the on-chain value, PoW could do better than Pos. There are many optimizations in PoW on Starcoin.
   • Example 2. On-chain Governance: Our world is changing fast, blockchain does the same! With on-chain governance, Starcoin has the capability of embracing changes.
   • Example 3. Billable state: On-chain value is rare, the layer 1 should focus on value selection, not information storage.Over time, the layer 1 will filter value, and at the same time,clean out expired information which was considered to be valuable, but now is not.Billable state can easily solve the state explosion problem which caused by expired information.
   • Example 4. Move: Starcoin smart contract programming language Move is designed to define custom resource types, and one of the important features of resource is value. That is to say, Move can empower on-chain value.
   • More.

2. Layer 2

   We have mentioned in the layer 1 on Starcoin, we focus on value streams. Let’s move on to the Layer 2 of Starcoin. The layer 2 is committed to connecting each person. With the layer 2 technology on Starcoin, everyone could enjoy the convenience which blockchain has offered, such as: micropayment, listening to music,watching movies, and playing games.

   From a technical perspective, Starcoin has many solutions,such as: state channels, rollup, side chains,etc. With these solutions, details of the technical things are hidden to the general user, users can use these solutions just as using a faucet.

3. Move

   Move is a resource-oriented programming language. Just in my own opinion, Move is a revolution of smart contract programming language. Why am I saying this? Our common programming language is information-oriented. But, information can be copied and transmitted at any time. Here is a simple example, one twitter post, you can forward without any notice,this is information. Your identity number or your phone number is a string, you can use in bank A, while use in bank B, this is also information.On the contrary, the resource is different with information,and it’s rare, it’s impossible to copy. It’s a secure bug if you can copy one-dollar to two-dollar. In a centralized scenario, using information to express resources, to ensure information data right, we need to do lots of manual tests. But, at the end, we have to change the database if we still have errors. But in a decentralized scenario, changing databases is impossible. What do we need to do? We need resource-oriented programming, to make sure that resources cannot be copied and changed at virtual machine level. This is the core of Move.

4. DeFi

   DeFi has attracted huge attention, Starcoin also concentrates on DeFi. With layer 1 technology and Move, selecting value and empowering value have been done. Next, let the value flow to achieve value reinvention, this is the vision of Starcoin. Some people who have been paying attention to Starcoin should have noticed that Starcoin’s DeFi infrastructure and products have been implemented and be able to launch soon.

5. New Generation

Layered, Move, DeFi, from value selection to value empowerment, to achieve value reinvention, at the end, on the layer 2, everyone will be connected together. Centering the value,blockchain has made a friendly closed ecological system.

Why does Starcoin use Move?

This is a brilliant question.

First,we need to realise one fact: everything is moving forward, from binary to assembly language to high-level programming language. The same is true for smart contracts, from Bitcoin Script to Ethereum Solidity, this is an advance. But, is Solidity the best one? In fact, endless security issues have been bothering us and restricted the growth of the entire industry, Poly Network attack is notorious,a hacker has stolen more than $611 million in funds from the cross-chain Poly Network. In a financial sense,security is more important than ever. We cannot ignore these issues if we hope that blockchain is sustainable, we need more powerful smart contract language. Move is designed to meet all the requirements.

We have said above, common programming is information-oriented, you can copy and change the information any time, just like a twitter post. In a centralized scenario, much detailed information cannot be exposed, we have many methods to solve these issues. But In the decentralized era,to implement DeFi and Opensource, even subtle errors will be magnified to be a big problem. For example, simple addition and subtraction operation could have significant security hazards, some real bugs such as: fake deposit attack,over money creation,overflow,ect. All these bugs are caused by the subtle errors.This is a big challenge to developers.

Resource-oriented programming can solve many security issues.

Let’s get a quick feel of what resources are. One item cannot be obtained easily if it has real values, we can treat this item as a resource. Resource-oriented programming means this resource cannot be copied and changed arbitrarily.

From a technical perspective,Move can guarantee that resources can only be transmitted,cannot be copied or implicitly discarded in Move virtual machines. Code cannot be compiled if you try to copy or modify or discard.

From a non-technical perspective, a resource is quite like a real house. You must have equivalent values and resources to build a house, this is a real trade. To finance and values,a resource is a more appropriate abstraction compared to information.Therefore, we can also say that Move has enhanced the financial scene through resources. To put it more succinctly, Move is a smart contract language that does not affect cryptocurrency functions.

We have taken tons of research and comparison when we decided to use Move as a smart contract programming language, we even considered developing a new language.But after learning Move, we think Move is our best choice.

You are really welcome to keep your eyes on our competition “Hackathon” which is held by the Starcoin community, you will meet some blockchain geniuses.

How do you develop applications on Starcoin?

We already have Starcoin public blockchain, Stdlib, browser plug-in StarMask, Starcoin browser, Starcoin vote Dapp.

At this stage, many open source communities have join us, below are some applications we are working on:

• 1 Cross-chain Bridge: including cross other public blockchain and exchanges. The initial version is ready now, and is being launched in phase, and will further maintain.
• 2 Oracle：Starcoin has developed a completed Oracle standard protocol, an oracle has been developed according to the protocol,which can provide off-chain data to Starcoin, and will be deployed on the main network.
• 3 NFT: Move has a natural advantage in NFT, Starcoin has developed a complete standard protocol, and has been integrating with other NFT platforms.StarMask is going to display NFT soon.
• 4 Swap: Starcoin will support in a short time, we are preparing for releasing.
• 5 Lending: It’s almost done now, and currently, in the test and optimization stage.
• 6 IDO: Starcoin has integrated with one IDO platform, and will be deployed on Starcoin soon.

More applications will come soon, some applications are developed, and also integrated with some famous platforms, what we have done is for value reinvention.

We are open and really appreciate everyone’s help!