Getting started
Cornerstone of the entire system, Public Mint's blockchain is an implementation of Ethereum with a few key functional differences to make it ideally suited for fiat.
Feature | Ethereum | Public Mint |
New tokens | Mining | Fiat deposits |
Gas model (fees) | Paid in ETH | Paid in fiat |
Consensus mechanism | Proof-of-Work | Proof-of-Authority |
Block Validator ID | Anonymous, not accountable | Public, fully accountable |
Besides being accessible indirectly via APIs and our Web Wallet, our blockchain is open and, well, public - anyone can join and is free to transact.
There are no miners in Public Mint. Supply increases or decreases pending confirmation of fiat deposits by custodians. Token creation is mediated by Public Mint, with fiat delivered straight to depositors' wallets. Tokenized fiat is burned by Public Mint following withdrawal initiation by custodian partners.
The native currency in the Public Mint blockchain is tokenized fiat. There is no native cryptocurrency (like Ether) with which to pay for transaction fees.
Tokenized fiat is managed by a smart contract and behaves like an Ethereum ERC-20 token instead of Ether. This means that all transactions within Public Mint go through a smart contract and require a contract data payload.
Public Mint uses the IBFT 2.0 Proof-of-Authority protocol, which is Byzantine fault tolerant and completely forkless. IBFT 2.0 allows for immediate transaction finality and a substantially higher throughput than Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work.
Public Mint nodes run a customized version of Hyperledger Besu, an open-source, enterprise-grade Ethereum client. Like Hyperledger Besu, our client offers a familiar JSON-RPC interface, granular permissions, and a stable consensus mechanism.
Validator nodes are full nodes that are authorized by the protocol to pool transactions into a block and subsequently add it to the chain, collecting transaction fees in the process. These are the equivalent to miners in Ethereum or Bitcoin.
Full nodes can't add new blocks. However, these nodes strengthen the network by verifying that transactions in each new block added by validators respect the consensus rules, ensuring validators remain honest. In addition to that, all Public Mint validators are known to the network and can be held accountable in case of misconduct.
Our client can be accessed via JSON-RPC, same as Ethereum. This means you can access our blockchain with the help of libraries such as web3.js, and (to a certain extent) apps like MyCrypto or Metamask.
Visit the blockchain integration section for the full instructions on how to communicate directly with the blockchain.
