More than one Blockchain?
The previous section introduced two blockchains, namely the Bitcoin Blockchain and the Ethereum Blockchain and were firsts in their own spaces. Bitcoin as a digital payment method, and Ethereum as a Smart Contract enabler.
Both these public blockchains then spawned variations (or forks) in an attempt to address shortcomings or to enhance the original systems.
The HashRepos Smart Contracts are designed for use on the Ethereum blockchain and its variants. In particular the xDai and the Rinkeby Testnet chains are supported in addition to the original Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
The Rinkeby testnet
Rinkeby is an Ethereum testnet (or test blockchain network). Use this blockchain to do practice runs if you are uncertain about how to hash and store your digital asset. Rinkeby test tokens are available for free from the Rinkeby faucet or contact us with your wallet address using our Contact form.
Note that Rinkeby tokens, unlike eth have no real exchange value and cannot be used in place of eth to purchase goods and services on the main Ethereum blockchain. There is also no guarantee that hashrepos records registered on this blockchain will persist as the test network may be purged periodically. This is a test blockchain network. Please use this blockchain ONLY to do test runs.
xDai
xDai is the name of a blockchain AND the stable cryptocurrency used on the xDai chain. Unlike eth, the xDai token is pegged to USD, and xDai token is worth ~ 1 US dollar. Thus the xDai token is known as a stablecoin.
Gas Fees
Although registering a digital asset using hashrepos is free, there are transaction fees to be paid when using a blockchain. These fees (also known as ‘gas’) are demand driven and fluctuate as in the case of the Ethereum blockchain where ‘mining’ is involved.
The xDai blockchain uses an alternative consensus method of securing the blockchain known as Proof of Authority (POA) allowing much lower ‘gas’ fees. In addition, as xDai is a stablecoin, total transaction costs are predictable and are much lower than you would experience on the Ethereum blockchain.
There is however, an inconvenience. In order to use the xDai blochain, you would first have to purchase the dai token on the Ethereum blockchain and then use an dai-xdai bridge to convert the dai to xdai.
The full instructions for doing this is found in this article.
Finally, please note that the hashrepos registries on each of the different blockchains are independent. If you use the Ethereum blockchain, you should check if a hash of your digital asset already exists in the alternate xDai blockchain, and vice versa.