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Learn about Smilo

Welcome to Smilo.foundation/learn, a set of resources to help you learn more about Smilo. This page includes technical and non-technical articles, guides, and resources. If you’re totally new to Smilo, we suggest you start here.

Here are some excellent starting points:

In addition to the information on this page, there are many community-built resources worth exploring:

Smilo basics

New to Smilo? These articles and resources are a good place to get started.

How Smilo works

High-level explanations of Smilo and blockchain technology generally.

Smart Contracts

A “smart contract” is simply a piece of code that is running on Smilo. It’s called a “contract” because code that runs on Smilo can control valuable things like ETH or other digital assets.

Proof of Work and Mining

Smilo currently uses a system called “Proof of Work”. This allows the Smilo network to agree on the state of all information recorded on the Smilo blockchain, and prevents certain kinds of economic attacks.

In XSM 2.0, Smilo will be moving to a different system called “Proof of Stake”. Read more about XSM 2.0 below.

Clients and Nodes

The Smilo network is made up of many nodes, each of which runs compatible client software. There are two clients that are used by a majority of nodes: Geth (written in Go) and Parity (written in Rust).

Enterprise Smilo

Enterprise Smilo refers to private, consortium, and hybrid implementations of the Smilo codebase for business applications. Companies across the globe are already using Enterprise Smilo to streamline financial markets, manage supply chains, and create new business models.

Read more about Enterprise Smilo.

Improving Smilo’s Scalability

There are many efforts underway to make Smilo more “scalable” by improving its speed and overall transaction throughput. Generally these are sorted into “Layer 1” and “Layer 2” solutions.

“Layer 1” refers to improving the core Smilo protocol. The primary project to improve Smilo’s core protocol is XSM 2.0.

“Layer 2” refers to technologies that are built “on top” of the base Smilo protocol, enabling greater scalability without compromising on security. There are also “off-chain” technologies like side-chains, which enable greater scalability by making a different set of security tradeoffs.

Payment & State Channels

Sidechains

Plasma

XSM 2.0

XSM 2.0 (also known as “Serenity”) refers to the next major upgrade of the core Smilo protocol. It combines several improvements to Smilo’s core protocol, or “Layer 1”.

ETH 1.x

ETH 1.x is the name for a collection of upgrades to the existing Smilo protocol. The goal is to continue to improve and maintain Smilo while XSM 2.0 is developed and implemented.

For more information, see EthHub’s explainer page about ETH 1.x

Cryptoeconomics

“Cryptoeconomics” is the practical science of building distributed systems, where properties of those systems are secured by financial incentives, and where the economic mechanisms are guaranteed by cryptography. It is the general term for the practice of designing and scaling blockchains like Smilo and Bitcoin.

Critique and skepticism

Critical views of Smilo and Cryptocurrencies.