Pharos Network Litepaper: Bridging TradFi and Web3 with a High-Performance Blockchain

Pharos is a high-performance blockchain built for real-world finance and programmable Web3 applications. It delivers scalable infrastructure to support high-frequency transactions, RWA tokenization, and internet-grade execution.

Problem Statement

Existing blockchain architectures struggle to support the demands of increasingly complex Web3 applications, leading to tangible pain points for users and developers alike. Inadequate transaction throughput results in frustrating bottlenecks for trading apps during peak hours, causing missed opportunities and a degraded user experience. High latency breaks the user experience in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, making it difficult to execute time-sensitive trades and participate in fast-moving markets. Furthermore, state bloat and inefficient storage solutions impede the development and deployment of applications requiring internet-scale performance, such as global payment networks and high-frequency trading platforms, ultimately hindering the growth and adoption of Web3.

Pharos Solution: Deeply Parallel Architecture

Pharos addresses these limitations through a deeply parallel architecture that optimizes performance across the entire blockchain stack. By embracing parallelism at the network, consensus, execution, and storage layers, Pharos achieves unprecedented scalability and efficiency. The Pharos architecture is designed to target Degree of Parallelism 4 (DP4) and beyond, leveraging advanced techniques to maximize throughput and minimize latency.

Key Technical Innovations

• Scalable Network and Consensus: Pharos employs a novel consensus protocol that achieves high throughput and low latency without relying on fixed timing assumptions. The consensus mechanism enables simultaneous block proposals from all validator nodes, eliminating the single-proposer bottleneck and maximizing network resource utilization. 
• Parallel Transaction Execution: The Pharos execution layer features a dual virtual machine (VM) architecture supporting both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly (WASM). This enables compatibility with existing Solidity-based smart contracts while providing a high-performance environment for contracts developed in languages such as Rust, C++, and Go. A sophisticated scheduler leverages static analysis and speculative execution to identify and execute independent transactions in parallel, maximizing concurrency and minimizing conflicts.
• Pipelined Block Processing: Pharos implements a multi-stage pipelining mechanism inspired by superscalar processors. The block lifecycle is divided into fine-grained stages, including consensus ordering, database preloading, parallel execution, Merkleization, block building, and database flushing. This pipelined approach enables parallel processing of multiple blocks, significantly enhancing resource utilization and overall throughput.
• Parallel Merkleization and Accelerated State Access: Pharos Store is a blockchain-native verifiable storage solution designed to address the challenges of state bloat and I/O bottlenecks. By integrating Authenticated Data Structures (ADS) directly into the storage engine and employing delta encoding and version addressing, Pharos Store achieves significant improvements in storage efficiency and I/O performance.

Network Architecture

The Pharos network comprises three essential node types:

• Validator Nodes: Participate in consensus and secure the network through a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol.
• Full Nodes: Store complete blockchain data and provide support for Fast State Sync and Parallel Hint generation.
• Relayer Nodes: Lightweight clients that maintain the latest state and facilitate high-frequency transactions for end-users and applications.

Pharos also supports the deployment of Special Processing Networks (SPNs), which are lightweight, dedicated networks that can be tailored to specific use cases, such as privacy-preserving computation or hardware acceleration. Validators can leverage restaking to allocate their staked assets to SPNs, enhancing security and enabling flexible resource allocation.

Pharos is building a foundational layer for real-world financial applications, enabling scalable asset issuance, on-chain liquidity, and modular app development across blockchains., By embracing parallelism at all levels and integrating innovative storage and execution techniques, Pharos is poised to unlock the full potential of Web3 and drive mass adoption of blockchain technology. Designed as an internet-scale real-world asset layer, Pharos connects traditional finance liquidity to modular Web3, enabling stable asset issuance, programmable RWA logic, and multichain interoperability.

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