Getting Started

What is Rangers Protocol

Rangers Protocol is a Metaverse blockchain infrastructure fully compatible with Ethereum and natively supports NFT and complex applications. Rangers Protocol integrates and expands cross-chain protocols, NFT protocols, EVM protocols, and distributed network protocols to achieve a high-performance chain group with multi-chain contract-level interoperability in the EVM system.

Introduction of Consensus Mechanism

Rangers Protocol consists of two core technologies — Rangers Engine and Rangers Connector. Rangers Engine includes the RPoS-based VRF+BLS consensus mechanism and is a high-performance, highly scalable chain that can support complex applications. Rangers Connector includes a consensus mechanism based on VRF+TSS and is responsible for completing the cross-chain services with various public chains.

VRF, or Verifiable Random Function, is an algorithm for generating random numbers. The advantage of using VRF is the relatively low power consumption. With the latest algorithms, verifying the legitimacy of VRF has been very fast, and it is an efficient consensus algorithm. In Rangers Protocol, the VRF algorithm is used to select candidate block packers and candidate block verification groups.

The BLS signature algorithm was proposed by three people from the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University: Dan Boneh, Ben Lynn, and Hovav Shacham. BLS’s main idea is to hash the message to be signed to a point on an elliptic curve and use the exchange property of the bilinear mapping E function to verify the signature without revealing the private key. The BLS signature algorithm is mainly used to aggregate each member’s signature in the verification group for the candidate block to generate the verification group signature.

TSS, or Threshold Signature Scheme, is a technology that changes the traditional 1:1 correspondence between the public and private keys to 1:N public and private keys proportion. The algorithm can be passed as long as t of the N private keys are used to sign the message independently. What differentiates it from multi-signature is that the latter occurs on the chain, while the threshold signature occurs off-chain, which can save the cost of calling operations on the chain multiple times.

Block Production Process

• VRF selects a proposal node from the proposal group and is responsible for generating blocks;

• The proposal node selects the verification group through VRF, and the proposal node sends the block to each member of the verification group;

• Every member in the verification group will verify the block, sign, and send the signature to each member in the verification group;

• After verifying each group member, after collecting the signatures of a threshold number of others, the group signature is generated and broadcast to the entire network.

The flowchart is as follows:

Introduction of Tokenomics

Rangers Protocol designed Rangers Protocol Gas (RPG for short) as an infrastructure token with a total supply of 21 million pieces. Ecological nodes that generate blocks are divided into proposal and verification nodes. This system adopts an open participation mechanism, allowing all users to participate in the system’s operation.

RPG will circulate among users, developers, investors, and ecological nodes. For ecological nodes, the qualification of becoming a node can be obtained through RPG Staking.

Under this sound economic circulation, PRG has the following distribution principles:

• Investors(10%): Unlocked within 400 days, equal unlock (claim) each day;

• The Core team (14%): Core developers and maintainers, 8% of the remaining amount is released every 180 days;

• Incubators and consultants (7%): Incubators and strategic partners, 8% of the remaining amount is released every 180 days;

• Ecological community (49%): 8% of the remaining amount is released every 180 days, the ecological community is divided into the proposal and verification nodes. Proposal nodes (35%): join through RPG-staking election and provide special hardware. Verification nodes (14%): stake RPG, and provide required hardware.

• Ecological fund (20%): The unused amount is locked and relevant announcements made on the foundation website upon use.

• Treasury (0%): Reward and penalty pool, dynamically balanced during operation, the value can be adjusted by community voting. It includes the penalty (Slash) and taxation mechanisms.

Minimum hardware requirements for mining exploration

• CPU： core8

• RAM: 16G

• HDD: 1T

• Network: 100M bandwidth

Proposal Node

The obligations of the proposal node

The obligations of the proposal node are as follows：
• Package transactions, generate candidate blocks, and submit to the corresponding verification group

• To become a proposal node, it needs to stake 1,250 RPG to be qualified as a candidate proposal node. The stake amount will be adjusted according to the development of Rangers Protocol and the improvement of the governance mechanism. It should be noted that RPG cannot be unlocked from staking to block generation and reward allocation. It can only be unlocked until the release of node reward is completed in the designated time. There is only one stake for each node in each allocation period of block generation.

Rewards of proposal node

The rewards of the proposal node are as follows:
• After block generation, the proposal group will obtain 35% of total block rewards;

• The proposal node of block generation will obtain 10.5% of the proposal group’s rewards separately.

• All the nodes within the proposal group (including block generation node) will share 24.5% of the rest rewards according to the proportion of node staking.

The calculation formula is as follow:
\begin{align}\begin{aligned}\begin{split}Q_{proposal node for block generation } &= Rangers Protocol current block reward\times\frac{3}{4}+\frac{stake amount of this node }{total stake amount of proposal nodes} \\ &\times RangerProtocol current block reward\times\frac{1}{2}\end{split}\\Q_{other proposal node}=\frac{stake amount of this node}{total stake amount of proposal nodes}\times Rangers Protocol current block reward\times\frac{1}{2}\end{aligned}\end{align}

Proposal process

The proposal node will regularly calculate the VRF value based on the information of the block with the highest quantity and the staking information of all nodes. If VRF value meets the threshold, it comes into the proposal process:

• transaction packaging

• transaction implementation

• generate the status merkleTree root hash after executing the transaction

• select the verification group according to VRF

• calculate rewards of block generation

• generate the candidate blocks, including the following information: transaction hash table, transaction of merkleTree root hash, status merkleTree root hash, timestamp, height, the last Hash, proposal node id, the verification group id, VRF value, priority weighting, block hash,etc

• submit the candidate blocks to the verification group

how to apply to become a proposal node

For the application of becoming a proposal node, please refer to: the specific process of the application of becoming a proposal node

Verification Nodes

Obligations of Verification Nodes

The obligations of a Verification node include the following:
• Participate in the creation process of Verification group regularly

• Validate the candidate block and provide the signature

• Collect sufficient signatures within the group and restore the group generation signatures

• To become a verification node, any registered users can apply by staking 400 RPG. There is no restriction on the application of the verification node, as long as the stake can enter the random pool and become the candidate verification node. The generation of Verification nodes still follows the VRF mechanism. RPG cannot be unlocked from stake to block generation allocation. It can only be unlocked within the specified time after node rewards allocation is completed. Each node can only stake once in each block allocation cycle.

Verification Nodes Reward

The rewards for proposal nodes are as follows:
• After the block is generated, the verification group will receive 14% of the total block reward;

• All nodes in the verification group will be rewarded according to the proportion of each node’s token stake ratio

The calculation formula is as follows:
$Q_{Verification signature node} = \frac{The node’s stake amount}{Total stake amount of proposal node}\times RangerProtocol current block reward\times\frac{2}{7}$

Verification process

• Verify the VRF value of the candidate block

• Calculate the verification group based on the VRF value and verify whether the verification group is selected

• Verify the priority weight of a candidate block. If a candidate block with a higher priority has been verified in this round of consensus, the block is not verified

• Execute the packaged transaction in the candidate block and verify the merkleTree root hash after the transaction

• Verify block generation rewards

• Verify block hash

How to apply to become a verification node?

For details about how to apply to become a verification node, please refer to：Specific process for applying to become a verification node