Supra ($SUPRA) is a decentralized oracle network that combines lots of the latest advancements in infrastructure, deterministic computation, parallel execution, and interoperability together in a complete and compelling package. This is the technology deep dive for Supra, going into various aspects of the protocol in detail.
On a high-level, these are the outstanding features of Supra most worth noting:
Tribes and Clans Supra uses a “Tribes and Clans” model to approach consensus and modularity. This is comparable to the concept of quorum-based consensus protocols applied by Cardano and Polkadot in versions of Ouroboros and by Avalanche in Snow.
We call the set of validators a ‘Tribe,’ and we call the subsets that we randomly select from this set ‘Clans.’ In summary, Clans are non-overlapping subsets of the Tribe. Within its own system, Supra holds each clan responsible for a price pair and actually distributes the pairs equally among the clans. However, every node in a clan is observing the same pair as the other members in the clan.
Moonshot Consensus Moonshot, crafted by SupraOracles, is a clear-cut consensus protocol that stands out by allowing consensus phases to overlap. Moonshot does a good job in balancing communication ease and block finalization speed. By taking bits from both Tendermint and Jolteon and adding new features, Moonshot comes forward as a strong consensus protocol that helps in quickly finalizing blocks without increasing communication load, which is very important for the smooth and efficient working of blockchain networks.
Hypernova Supra has a bridge called HyperNova, which uses Ethereum’s sync committee light client protocol. One of the best features of this bridge is that it only requires one relayer node to operate. The only task of bridge nodes is to present Ethereum signatures to Supra. Therefore, you don’t trust any of the nodes working for the bridge during this process. HyperNova operates with a 1 of N trust assumption, and Supra natively incorporates this technology. Even if you do an excellent job architecturally while developing a new L1, it doesn’t mean much if you can’t convince the community and onboard people to your chain. Supra solves this problem with its native trustless bridge
DORA: Distributed Oracle Agreement If you don’t have an oracle service within your L1, there’s not much you can do in terms of DeFi or other areas because your development playground is very limited. Fortunately, Supra offers these services natively. The biggest advantages are cost reduction and not adding a new trust assumption by relying on a third-party oracle service.
Partial Order-based Parallel Execution Unlike Aptos and Monad’s speculative strategies, which can involve rollbacks and re-execution cycles, partial order based parallel execution relies on predetermined access specifications — which is fully deterministic. The network always knows exactly which transactions can be executed in parallel without conflict, ensuring consistent outcomes. Solana’s approach involves including read-write sets in each transaction which can bloat the transaction size by 300% and slow down data dissemination. On the other hand, Supra’s partial order based parallel execution does not bloat transactions with a lot of extra data. Instead, it relies on the pre-analyzed access specifications, keeping transaction sizes minimal for faster data dissemination, allowing Supra to maintain high throughput and low latency.
Vertical Integration Supra currently natively hosts services like VRF, Oracle, and most recently, Bridge. Natively hosting these three services on its own products is impactful and greatly more efficient.
The Supra team, by developing these services themselves, gains the chance to utilize the potential arising from the common use of these services. They also have the opportunity to offer a smoother user experience in terms of UX. Another important issue is security: Partially the same teams or teams aware of each other developing the services means a more secure environment can be offered. Because you fully know the structure of the two native services you use in the product you develop, you can also significantly reduce the security problems of the new features you develop with small modifications. However, the security issue is not limited here; you are also removing a trust assumption for DeFi products developed without using interoperability that Supra did not develop.
With these innovations, Supra has expanded the playground for developers and taken the potential of the products they can produce one step further. They have obtained the chance to introduce new features using interoperability between their services and offer users a smoother user experience compared to other networks. They have eliminated the necessity for developers to rely on third-party services, at least for the services Supra offers, and have provided security benefits for Dapps on the chain. Lastly, they have taken a forward step in onboarding users from other ecosystems to Supra through their native trustless Bridge.
When we combine these products with a fast consensus mechanism like Moonshot and a secure VM that uses an execution engine like Block-STM to execute transactions quickly and in parallel, like MoveVM, we can see that Supra will have a significant advantage over other blockchains in terms of UX and Security.
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Technology References:
Ouroboros Consensus https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf
Avalanche Consensus https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/32596 Show Less
