FAQs

The Timegraph is an aggregated, on-chain database of all submitted real-work time information. It serves as an immutable and uncensorable version of history. Its searchable and filterable nature makes it highly flexible, enabling it to underpin many varied use cases.

The Timechain is Analog’s decentralized blockchain to which event data is submitted by nodes. Event data is uploaded on this chain in an ordered sequence and is verified to become immutable.

The Analog Timegraph API is an interface that allows for ease of interaction with the complex data stored in the Timegraph. For example, it could be used to search and collate event data submitted by a variety of different third-party users and present this data in an easily comprehensible dashboard. The API is essentially Analog’s front end to the Timegraph backend.

Analog’s Time Continuum is a smart contract execution and development platform that allows developers to create event data-specific smart contracts that run on the Analog Timechain. They are not controlled by a user, but instead deployed to the network and run as programmed. Rules are defined and enforced via the code. Continuum contracts cannot be deleted by default; interactions with them are irreversible. Users are able to interact with these smart contracts by submitting transactions that execute a function defined on the smart contract.

A time node is a participant in the network who confirms event data onto the Timechain.

Becoming a time node is easy. You’ll just need to download and register our client before proceeding.
If you need help, you’ll be able to get your questions answered on our #node-support channel on our Discord server.

The $ANLOG token is used to incentivize nodes to run the network. It further incentivizes publishers to submit event data and subscribers to subscribe to that data. $ANLOG is also used as a reward to encourage nodes to deepen and broaden the immutable history recorded on the Timechain by the submission and collation of event data.

The Analog Network refers to the interacting community of participants and technical mechanisms that power Analog and the Timegraph. Our time nodes, tesseract nodes, cross-chain event data transfer protocol (XCEDT), gateway smart contracts, dApps, developers and end-users all make up the Network.

The Analog Network relies on a wide variety of participants; platform builders, DApp developers, and users.
Here’s how various stakeholders participate in the Analog network:

• Platform builders: They can easily plug in their chains to all other networks. They only need to set up a threshold account to plug into these chains.
• DApp builders: They can host their DApps anywhere and communicate with other applications on different platforms via the Analog’s decentralized API.
• Users: Users can interact with all DApps across the entire Blockchain ecosystem directly from their Analog wallets.

There are four categories of nodes – publishers, time nodes, time electors, and tesseract nodes.

Publishers:
A publisher is any node that is incentivized to submit event data to Analog’s marketplace. Subscribers (consumers) can use the publisher’s event data to power Analog’s inherent dApps, applications implemented from other chains, microservices, and other intelligent data pipelines. Subscribers and other companies can subscribe to valuable event data from Publishers, creating a global event data marketplace pipeline with built-in provenance, access control, and privacy. 

Time Nodes:
A time node is any node on the network that participates in the consensus process. Time nodes confirm blocks and append them to the Timechain. The authority of time nodes to confirm blocks emanates from their fixed stake and ranking scores. The more stake and ranking score a time node has, the more likely it will be selected to confirm blocks. 

Time Electors:
A time elector is a special time node that proposes blocks to the Timechain. The probability of becoming a time elector is proportional to the fixed stake and a ranking score. Any time node can become a time elector provided it has a higher ranking score and fixed stake. The time elector must compute the VDF when proposing blocks to prove that the block was created after some time (delay). In other words, the PoT protocol ensures that timestamps become inbuilt into the Timechain.

Tesseract Nodes:
Tesseract nodes are special publishers that fetch event data from external chains. Any node can join the network as a Tesseract and fetch event data from external networks. A core component of Tesseract nodes is that they rely on decentralized protocols to fetch event data from outside networks. Besides fetching event data, Tesseract nodes also maintain and run cross-chain routing and transfer of event data from the network to target chains. The network’s governance rules enable the Tesseract nodes to enact crucial decisions such as which networks to interoperate with and which assets to support.
Like publishers, each tesseract is incentivized for every confirmed event event data that gets appended to the Timechain.

The protocol has no barriers to entry. Any user can participate in the consensus process provided they have a higher ranking score and have staked an equal amount of tokens in their accounts. This is because block generation does not require expensive hardware like the case with PoW or highest staked coins (PoS).

The development team is hard at work developing the Testnet. Refer to our Roadmap for a sense of the project’s progress, and join our Discord and Telegram to get fresh updates of our journey.

The Analog Network uses a PoT protocol that uses a ranking score and not the computational resources (PoW) or staked tokens (PoS). This means any user can join the network and participate in consensus without being hindered by staked coins or hardware. We have also incorporated block pipeling and multi-threading to help improve transaction throughput.

Prior to the launch of mainnet. We shall announce this at an appropriate time.