What’s the point of Thru?
If you’re here to learn about Thru, it may be helpful to first understand why we built it! The challenge that blockchains like Thru solve is the problem of decentralized trust. As you already know, computer programs are very useful for managing lots of information. However, traditional software requires that we run code on a single machine. For many applications, this is undesirable, since it requires us to trust an authority to run the code. The authority could be unreliable, or it could even be malicious and change the output of the software. Blockchains like Thru allow people to publish and execute programs, so that anyone can trust that the code has been executed correctly, and we are not reliant on any single machine to run the code. The blockchain consists of many servers, called validators, that execute programs as requested by users; an execution is called a transaction. The validators agree upon the results in a process called consensus, in which it is impossible for bad actors to manipulate the results (unless they have a huge amount of financial resources, which they would risk losing). Because validators are paid to participate in consensus, and anyone can become a validator (with some initial investment), the network runs in a decentralized manner. It can survive losing validators, so even if some servers crash, the network can continue to run. Analogous to traditional storage mediums, programs can persist data on the network in accounts.Why is this useful?
Here are some classic applications of blockchains:- Financial transactions: We can process the exchange of digital currencies without having to rely on centralized banks or payment networks, which can be unreliable or slow. Thru doesn’t rely on a particular company to process transactions, and is designed to allow programs to execute in seconds. On Thru, the token program is used to represent currencies.
Why Thru?
There are many other blockchains, so why did we make Thru? Thru has been designed from the ground up to allow programs to execute quickly and cheaply. A key feature is that programs on Thru are written using RISC-V, a popular computer architecture. You can easily write programs in your favourite programming languages, such as C, C++, or Rust, and they execute quickly thanks to the RISC-V architecture. Because the validators can run programs quicker, you can get your results faster, and less computing resources are used, ultimately leading to financial savings.The Thru token
Unfortunately, computing resources aren’t free. To keep the network running, validators need to receive payment for running the network. They are paid in a special currency called the Thru token. When requesting transactions to be run, you pay a fee which incentivizes validators to run your transaction; each validator gets a share of the fee.Interacting with the network
Directly interacting with the Thru network is difficult, since the validator software requires a lot of setup and hardware. When you want to use the blockchain, you interact with special servers via remote procedure call (RPC). RPC servers participate in the network. If you want to submit a transaction, or you want to query the state of the blockchain, you can do so by an RPC request.Ecosystem
We’ve built a variety of software to help you use Thru to solve your problems:- The Thru program SDKs for C, C++, and Rust help you write and build programs that run on the Thru network.
- The Thru CLI helps you interact with the Thru network over RPC, including uploading and executing programs.
- The Thru web SDKs helps you interact with Thru over RPC, so you can make web apps that use Thru programs on the backend. See Developer Resources for more information.