Archethic White Paper
Be the master of your identity
What if technology could finally simplify your daily life without jeopardizing your security? What if you were told that you already have this technology?
The Uniris (Biometric-solution) promise is to provide access to all technologies with a simple touch of your finger while protecting your identity. The Uniris team has developed an ultra-secure and tamper-proof technology that is as secure as a chip of a bank card. It allows you to replace any password, key or other authentication device by simply reading inside your fingers.
To operate on a global human scale without control or intervention of any person, company or organization, this “open source” technology is based on a new generation network called “Blockchain”. To achieve the scale and adoption we improved the Blockchain technology so that it can replace any application or service: open your car or home door, identify yourself or pay online without risk to your data or goods, always have your medical record accessible yet protected … This technology just works from the very first use regardless of where you are.
To function and reward people who host a network server (miner) that verifies any transaction on the Archethic blockchain, a Blockchain is built around a cryptocurrency (UCO in the case of Archethic). This currency is created at the start of the project to finance all developments thus making each investor, a real participant in the construction of this New World from the very first moment of inception.
Join us as an investor, developer, ambassador and become an active builder of the future of global connections.
Archethic Overview
Archethic blockchain offers the first integrated services platform capable of meeting a fundamental need: giving everyone back the control over technology. In this way Archethic (by Uniris) is part of the promise of a safer, more inclusive and truly decentralized world, 4 years of research and 12 strong international patents endow Archethic (by Uniris) with the technological attributes that the predecessors have lacked — scalability, speed, reliability and simplicity of native biometric recognition. These patents would be given to open source community to foster participation and hence accelerate the pace of innovation.
Designed for mass adoption, Archethic relies on a new form of unbreakable validation consensus (ARCH), which is ultra-secure and allows an unlimited number of transactions. Uniris embeds biometry in a native way using a method of identification that is tamper-proof and accessible to all. This technology uses the incredible complexity of the inside of the fingers, unique to each individual without the need to store any biometric data.
Our cryptocurrency, the UCO, is the backbone of the network that fuels these transactions and monetizes the contributors in developing the ecosystem built for the people by the people. Our blockchain platform aims to replace and to improve all current applications with a comprehensive and open ecosystem, allowing people to move from the trust imposed by centralized systems (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Banks…) to a decentralized system where everyone will retain control of their data, property and privacy.
Uniris gives back to humanity the control over technology and each individual control over their identity.
Competitive Landscape & Archethic Advantage
The most scalable, safe and energy-efficient Blockchain thanks to the ARCH consensus
For the first time in history, the Blockchain represents a technology that can work without a central decision-making body. A system that is not only impartial but also transparent and inalienable. The new form of Consensus ARCH, created by Uniris, is based on an unpredictable election of a small subset of nodes (miner) to validate and store transactions (197 per 100,000 nodes). The network uses supervised multicasting so that each node will always know where to look for data via the most efficient network path, allowing a linear increase in the number of transactions/sec as a function of the number of network nodes (~100x). The table below presents the main differences with the other Blockchains :
Smart-contracts: autonomous robots of the digital age
Smart-contracts are in computing what robots are in real life: they perform actions according to events. The Archethic smart-contracts take a technological leap forward. They are autonomous and can be triggered from internal events (date, transactions) or real life (the Oracle channel: verified by consensus and cross-referencing of information) such as weather, stock price, news. They adapt to their environment. Entirely modifiable, they are natively able to manage operations like stock management, payments, web hosting … without creating reality outside of confirmed transactions (UTXO).
A decentralized identity that respects our privacy
Decentralized identity obviates the need of entrusting one’s identity to a third party, who might find itself in a conflict of interest and exploit our identity without our knowledge, such as Google, Facebook or our favorite merchant site. The person retains sole control of his/her identity, which is stored on a multitude of nodes ensuring its durability and integrity. This decentralized identity thus guarantees respect for privacy and its interoperability with the rest of the applications. Coupled with the possibilities offered by smart-contracts, it becomes a central element of our interactions with the world: Access to major public events (Olympic Games, concerts, etc.), to transport, hotels, our messages, without ever having to reveal the details of our identity.
The end of passwords and unnecessary media
Embedded in the blockchain, the biometric technology provided by Uniris allows anyone to identify themselves without difficulty and without storing any biometric data. This is an access control which is forgery-proof and without disclosure. How does it work?
The biometric data from inside one of our fingers will generate several cryptographic keys that will never be disclosed and using which our digital identity will be encrypted. Only the person capable of regenerating one of these keys will be able to decipher their digital identity and hence prove their identity. Beyond the technological elegance, capable of generalizing biometrics without risk to our private lives, this method makes it possible to solve the major problem of Blockchains which is mass adoption.
An almost unlimited market
“The river always chooses the most efficient route”
In the pre-historic model of the web (still prevalent since origin), each new service recreates its elementary operating blocks each time: portal, customer identification, customer databases, service management, hosting, storage, backups, payments. Amazon, Facebook, Google and others do not share anything, leading to:
- An appalling consumption of computational power
- A plethora of login/passwords for users who end up copying their passwords everywhere and give them away
- Risks of fraud or cyberattack that can shake the planet
The Blockchain + Decentralized Identity model finally rationalizes this operating model by directly integrating all the layers necessary for the creation of new services :
- Much less need for computer skills thanks to upstream integration
- Unique and universal identity, activated only by the holder, regardless of their physical or virtual location of visit
- Deletion of third parties in favor of the Blockchain to ensure the sustainability of the system
- Major economic and financial impact on the cost of each new service.
Market research studies
A globalized market with 80.2% growth between 2018 and 2023
The Blockchain market is conservatively estimated at 23 billion USD by 2023 compared to 1.2 billion in 2018 with an impressive annual growth rate of 80.2% between 2018 and 2023.This incremental statistic does not take into account the possible replacement of current services and application platforms, a very credible possibility.
The Universal Coin (UCO) A cryptocurrency programmed to grow
The new economy of cryptocurrency tokens is based on the sound and universal principle of supply and demand similar to commodities such as gold or diamonds. A cryptocurrency creates value on an open-source platform that will survive independently of the company that created it. Our foremost strategy is to create the technological conditions such that the “miners” who place their trust in our platform create and capture the most value possible. In addition, we ensure the right balance of supply and demand.
Control Supply
Limit the offer: 10 billion UCOs and not one more. If someone invests in gold while someone else discovers how to make it at a lower cost, then the price of gold will fall, because there will be more supply than demand. The Archethic Blockchain prohibits the creation of new UCOs because any transaction is based on the existence of a previous unspent transaction (UTXO)
Limit Distribution: To avoid the effect of a massive influx of UCOs on the exchange markets that could lower the price due to sudden increase in supply, Archethic is putting in place a lock-up mechanism. With the exception of UCOs purchased during private (partly) and public sale, all other UCOs are locked and vested over a period of two to five years. During this time the arrival of new applications on the network would lead to increase in demand offsetting the possible increase in supply.
Programmed deflation: The Archethic Blockchain will automatically destroy part of the UCOs resulting from transaction costs, thus creating a programmed deflation mechanism to increase the value of each UCO (grey part of the curve).
Create Demand
The second principle is to create scarcity of the resource through demand. Beyond the biometric devices that will only be available in UCO, the challenge is to create a massive adoption of the solution (need to buy UCO to reach a real need). Our strategy is based on 3 axes (described in detail in the Roadmap later):
Be the reference platform for smart-contracts production and Universal Digital Identity:
Thanks to the unprecedented and long-awaited features of smart-contracts (autonomous, modifiable, integrated Oracle, scalable …) and finally integrating a decentralized Identity usable by anyone, the Uniris platform propels the world of smart-contracts beyond the world of cryptocurrency.
Increase usage by offering the simplest and most advanced platform for service creation:
Like an AppStore that allows you to multiply the number of applications and services on the network, the objective of Uniris is not to develop and deploy all the different applications, but to create an ecosystem that facilitates, finances and supports the arrival of all these applications. The network will thus provide functionalities that are the necessary building blocks to replace existing applications (see Roadmap).
The World at your Fingertips:
The final objective of the project is to generalize biometric identification (or derivatives) on a global scale from a 100% open and transparent network that can finally prove trust. From the opening of house or car doors, through all the exchange mechanisms to votes.
Growth hypotheses of the UCO Cryptocurrency
The most appropriate current method for assessing the value of a Blockchain (Market Capitalization) is based on Metcalfe’s law that relates the value of the network to the number of users.
A lot of research has been done on the subject of cryptocurrency valuation using Metcalfe’s Law. Different variations were used to describe the price of Bitcoin and using the Pearson correlations over the period between 2010 and 2018, it was found that the value of the network is of the order of:
value of blockchain ~ n^1.5
(n representing the number of users)
This law thus makes it possible to obtain an approximation of the value of a network according to the number of users. For example, considering an event such as the Paris Olympics 2024, which alone brings together 8 million people and knowing that the maximum number of UCO exchangeable on the market over this period will be 75% (7,5 billion UCOs), we thus obtain:
(10 million)1.5 = € 31.6 billion, i.e. a valuation per available UCO of €31.6 billion / 7,5 billion UCO ~ € 4.2/UCO
Distribution, Allocations and Mining
A model that emphasizes value sharing
UCO Token Model
The number of UCO tokens, the initial value of the UCO as well as the market capitalization are initialized according to the means required for the implementation of the ecosystem as well as the growth hypotheses and priorities of the project.
On the Uniris ICO (Initial Coin Offering), two actors have been privileged:
- Early Investors: the near-exclusivity of available tokens during the first two years will be those of the ICO.
- The Contributors mobilized up to the delivery of the ecosystem (10% of tokens at code delivery and 90% after the effective and functional deployment of the code).
With the exception of the tokens sold, the other Universal tokens (UCOs) will be blocked and released at 20–33% per year over a period of 2 to 5 years.
The 14.6% of the network reserve will be used to guarantee a favorable financial incentive for miners pending the self-financing period.
Finally, the 9% allocated to improvements will be used to develop new use-cases but can only be sold when the value of the UCO is greater than 100x the initial value (i.e. 0.7€/UCO).
Allocation of funds
The purpose of private and public sales is to raise funds to develop the network and innovations published in the yellow paper. The diagram opposite shows the functional distribution of the funds collected.
Miners (nodes) and mining on the Archethic network
No need for boots and a construction helmet!
Mining and proof of work on the Archethic network are no longer based on the computing power and electrical energy expended, but on a cryptographic verification to validate and secure the origin of a transaction (biometric devices, smartphones, hardware or software keys …). As a direct result of the ARCH consensus, only 295 miners are needed to offer the same performance as the Bitcoin network, which has ~ 100,000 miners.
This will allow anyone to own a storage node and receive the associated remuneration, but only miners chosen by the network itself may become miners of validation. This election, transparent through a smart-contract aims to maximize the geographic distribution of miners, but also ensures a sufficient level of income for all miners elected (thus avoiding the risk of mining farms jeopardizing the robustness of decentralized networks). The first miners will be elected as a matter of priority from among first-time investors who have made it possible to finance the development of the network.
The fees are calculated according to the real costs of the network (size, complexity …). The maximum and minimum fees are defined through the Oracle chain which is able to adjust these two limits according to the costs of electricity or the market value of the UCO cryptocurrency. Thus making it possible to perpetuate the financial model for both miners and users.
The Team !
Created in 2017, after 2 years of fundamental research by Aina, Christophe, Nilesh and Sébastien, UNIRIS SAS is partially owned by École Polytechnique (Paris Saclay), financed by BPI France and Investors of the smart-city up to one million euros. At the end of the ICO (public sale of UCO cryptocurrency) an entity will be created as an association to organize the community and by 2025, let the Public Blockchain fly on its own wings.
Our team is a unique blend of complementary, cohesive and experienced personalities from companies such as Thales, Mastercard, Barclays, Orange, Mozilla, Google, PwC and researchers from the École Polytechnique, CNRS. Most of us know each other well before the creation of the project, professionally or personally, which has allowed us to save a considerable amount of time in the implementation of each of the solution’s components.
A big thank you to all those who have accompanied us since the beginning of this adventure: the entire program team HEC Challenge+, the accelerator of the École Polytechnique X-UP, the StationF Founders Program, GICAT, CEPS, Cap Gemini, our investors without whom this would not have been possible: Stéphane, the BPI and all our investors from the private sale. A big thank you also to all the people, ambassadors and advisors who made it possible to refine both the technological and human dimensions of this project.
Roadmap for the future
The Archethic network, the essential building block and catalyst for the creation of a New World of Services with proven trust, interoperability, accessibility and control by all.
Archethic Public Blockchain
Archethic is a Layer 1 aiming to create a new Decentralized Internet.
Its blockchain infrastructure is the most scalable, secure & energy-efficient solution on the market thanks to the implementation of a new consensus: "ARCH".
Archethic smart contracts expand developers' boundaries by introducing internal oracle, time-triggers, editable content & interpreted language.
Through native integration for DeFi, NFTs & decentralized identity; Archethic offers an inclusive and interoperable ecosystem for all blockchains.
In order to achieve the long-term vision of an autonomous network in the hands of the world population, we developed a biometric device respecting personal data privacy (GDPR compliant).
Making the blockchain world accessible with the tip of a finger. Be the only key! https://www.archethic.net/
Archethic Foundation Non-profit in order to manage decentralized governance of the public blockchain
Do you want to learn more?
White Paper
Yellow Paper