In the crypto world, the launch of a new project is often met with a healthy mix of anticipation and skepticism. However, in the case of Spacemesh, a novel consensus protocol that is fully permissionless, its release was met primarily with a high degree of enthusiasm globally. In fact, the project’s release date — July 14th — was chosen as a means of not only commemorating the storming of the Bastille but also to launch its associated cryptocurrency, i.e. the People’s Coin.

The aim of the asset is to achieve widespread adoption, especially among a younger, more crypto-enthused audience. Moreover, it seeks to serve underprivileged demographics that have been unable to join the ongoing crypto revolution due to various social, technical, and financial barriers to entry.

Since the project’s launch, the numbers have spoken for themselves. Between epoch 2 to epoch 4, the growth rate of the network has increased from 2,807 downloads to a whopping 32,034 downloads. Similarly, between epochs 2 to 3, the number of downloads increased by 2.5X, showing widespread acceptance as well as the effectiveness of Spacemesh’s unique consensus protocol.

The People’s Coin and its consensus approach

Spacemesh’s aforementioned success can, in large part, be attributed to its underlying technology. Led by Prof. Tal Moran, he and his team of cryptographers have developed a novel way to achieve consensus in a permissionless setting. Unlike the commonly used Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS) governance frameworks, Spacemesh employs the Proof of Space-Time (PoST) mechanism. This ensures fairness for smaller home miners, rewarding them based on their storage commitment size during each epoch.

Expanding on the core differences between PoST and the other consensus mechanisms mentioned above, Tomer Afek, co-founder & CEO of Spacemesh, explained that while PoW and PoS are useful in their own rights, they offer extreme tradeoffs. In PoW, the network offers uncompromising security, but that takes a toll on both the system’s transaction throughput and its general operating environment. On the other hand, PoS offers an alternative that is ideal for the network environment and throughput but requires higher assumptions to achieve its security guarantee. Focusing in on the advantages of PoST, Afek added:

“PoST is an aim to achieve in part what PoS is after, with respect to environmental soundness, scalability and programmability without losing PoW soundness responsible foundations. Using access storage one already has at home, we believe, offers optimal limiting-factor resource to offer less wasteful riskless participation.”

Designed for everyone: What lies ahead?

One of the most compelling aspects of Spacemesh is its low barrier to entry. To become a miner (or a “smesher,” as they’re called), all a user needs is a computer with available storage space and a reliable internet connection. There is no need for any high-end processing hardware like GPUs, ASICS, etc. Such a level of inclusivity has led to a diverse ecosystem where even smaller participants can actively contribute without being priced out.

According to Afek, the eventual goal of Spacemesh is to financially empower people all over the world so that they can live doing what they love. “As the first step in fulfilling this vision, we aim to build the best Virtual Machine (VM) yet as well as achieve a widespread distribution of miners, which are fairly sparse as of now,” he noted.

Moreover, he believes that rather than forging commercial partnerships alone — which is often seen by many companies as the number one driver for their growth — the Spacemesh community is looking to expand organically, fostering a decentralized network of leaders in the process. Afek added:

“Our community is more concerned with creating the ultimate VM than about commercial partnerships. There must be a non-compromising separation between the community’s ‘own interests’ and the interest of any 3rd party. For now, we are focused on recruiting and connecting community leaders globally.”

The long game

Spacemesh’s PoST protocol is designed to be sustainable, requiring far less energy than PoW-based mechanisms. Moreover, the project’s tokenomics are designed for longevity. With a total finite supply of 2.4 billion SMH and a gradual vesting schedule, the Spacemesh dev team has ensured that the coin remains stable and increases in value over time.

As crypto adoption continues to surge globally, it will be interesting to see how offerings like Spacemesh mature and flourish, especially since they represent a paradigm shift in terms of how the masses perceive decentralized networks.