The hitchhikers guide to ProjectOrigin

This is the hitchhikers guide page, which will try to guide you through the documentation and help you get started with ProjectOrigin, what it is, and how it works.

Why

• Overview of why - An overview of why ProjectOrigin was created.

Cryptography and Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Before we start, let's go through some basic cryptographic concepts that are used in ProjectOrigin.

• Signature - A way to prove that a message is authentic and has not been tampered with.
• Pedersen Commitment - A way to commit, share and calculate on values, without revealing the it.
• Zero-Knowledge Proof - A way to prove that you know something, without revealing what you know.

Granular certificate and Transactions

Now that we know the basic cryptographic concepts, let's go through the basic building blocks of ProjectOrigin.

• Granular Certificates - A certificate that holds a quantity of energy in a slice.
• Transactions and streams - A transaction is a request to change the state of a stream grouped into blocks.
• Verifier - A system that verifies the validity of a transaction.

Merkle tree and Blockchain

Now that we know how transactions work, let's go through how to ensure tamper-evidence.

• Merkle Tree - A tree of hashes, which enables proof of inclusion and tamper-evidence.
• Blockchain - Blocks chained together to form a blockchain to ensure tamper-evidence.
• Registry - A system that holds the state of a streams and processes transactions.
• Network - A network of registries for scalability and decentralization.

Orchestration and Wallets

Now that we know how to ensure tamper-evidence, let's go through how to manage and coordinate complex transactions.

• Hierarchical Deterministic Keys (HD Keys) - A way to generate a sequence of public keys from a single master private key.
• Wallet (Concept) - A concept that holds the private keys, users data and signs transactions.
• Orchestration - A way to manage and coordinate the execution of complex transactions across multiple streams.
• Vault - A system that hosted system that holds many users wallets.
• Receive Slice - How the slices are transferred from one wallet to another.

Other systems

The ProjectOrigin system has additional functionality that can be used to extend the system.

• Stamp - A system to simplify the process of issuing certificates.
• Chronicler - A system for collecting claim information in a distributed and privacy-preserving way.
• Concordium - A external system that provides a immutable log.

Summary

• System Overview - A summary of the ProjectOrigin system.

How to contribute

• Contributing - Go here to learn how to contribute to ProjectOrigin.