nOS, a virtual operating system that aims to ease the deployment, discovery, and use of dApps, has released version 2.0 of its whitepaper and announced a partnership with ARK to facilitate the development of the nOS blockchain. During its revisions, nOS also placed new focus on increasing the revenue of applications through the use of blockchain-powered solutions.

The team is also in the process of overhauling the nOS Client, providing an updated account system, a decentralized app store, and taking the first steps for the integration of additional blockchains to the platform.

Whitepaper 2.0

In the updated whitepaper, nOS revised the project’s goals and use cases, with a focus on introducing “new implementable business models powered by blockchain technologies.”

In short, nOS aims to facilitate the adoption of new revenue streams for web 2.0 and web 3.0 applications through the use of blockchain technology. Both traditional web apps and dApps will be able to leverage these features, with the apps coexisting within the nOS App Store.

The team also outlined attention-based rewards, similar in concept to Brave Rewards, as an example of how users will be able to contribute to applications. In the system, the nOS Browser will measure a user’s relative attention for a given application, and periodically distribute a quantity of cryptocurrency (defined by the user) to the application in a peer-to-peer manner.

nOS Browser

nOS Client has also been revamped, now branded as the nOS Browser, featuring an overhauled account system that provides users with a single mnemonic phrase that is used to manage addresses for all blockchains supported by nOS.

The overhaul also introduces the nOS App Store, a decentralized and user-curated platform that will feature traditional applications in addition to dApps integrated from all popular blockchain platforms. The platform maintains extensive support for the NEO blockchain, with apps such as nOS Poker, Hashpuppies, and the NEO Economy Store.

In a conversation with NEO News Today, nOS founder and CEO Dean van Dugteren shared his thoughts on the impact of the nOS Browser release on projects in the NEO ecosystem:

By releasing the new nOS Browser and decentralized App Store, NEO-powered apps get more opportunities to reach new audiences. Especially since NEO apps form nOS’s initial supported offering of applications.

Since the App Store will be decentralized, it’ll be up to the network’s participants to decide how applications are ranked, but with NEO being the first supported platform and nOS having a large initial audience of NEO fans, I expect NEO apps to perform incredibly well.

I hope we’ll see a Smart Economy Curator on the network to help make that a reality. The incentive is there!

Moving forward, the nOS Browser will expand to offer support for additional blockchains including Ethereum, Bitcoin, ARK, and others.

Curated App Stores

To tackle the lack of transparency and potential manipulation of search rankings for applications in centralized app stores, nOS aims to incentivize app store curators. Independent curators, elected by NOS holders, will help populate the app store in a decentralized manner, with the top 10 voted curators being active and reward each block.

Other entities outside the top 10 can still curate apps and share content with followers, however these individuals are not rewarded. For users that do not follow specific curators, the nOS app store will always be populated with an aggregate of the apps selected by the top 10 curators.

According to the roadmap outlined in the updated whitepaper, nOS intends to offer an “App store-as-a-Service”, referring to the ability for its app store data to be imported for custom use by any other website or application.

nOS Blockchain

To streamline the development of the nOS blockchain, the team opted to use ARK Core, a modular and open-source blockchain framework built by ARK. The framework provides a Typescript codebase and dPoS consensus mechanism that nOS will adopt for its own MainNet.

The blockchain will be validated by 47 active delegates, who will take turns to propose blocks in return for an initial block reward of 4 NOS per block. Delegates, like curators, are elected by NOS holders, with votes defined by the wallet’s vote weight.

Seeking to enable communication channels between users, developers, curators, and delegates, nOS has also launched a social platform called nOS Chat. The platform requires a nOS ID account to login, and is maintained by the nOS team.

According to nOS, development of the blockchain is already in the late stages. The team aims to publish its codebase and deploy a public TestNet by the end of September 2019.

Vote Weighting

User vote weight is calculated based on the total balance and stake, with staked NOS granting a significant increase in vote weight. Curators and delegates, referred to as ‘votable entities,’ may choose to offer exclusive services to supporters using tiered benefits proportional to the supporter’s vote weight.

The blockchain will also offer a vote weight rebalancing model, with the majority of transactions fees being burned in order to address “possible shifts in voting weight going from voters towards delegates during times of increased transaction activity on the network.”

Powered by ARK

Echoing a sentiment shared in the original whitepaper, nOS noted in its announcement that the project became aware it required a blockchain to fully realize its vision, rather than being limited to only smart contracts. This lead the team to research and evaluate available frameworks, with ARK being selected as the best candidate for creating customized blockchains.

nOS also announced that it has formed a strategic and technical partnership with ARK, becoming the first ARK bridgechain to be officially accepted into the “Powered by ARK” program.

The partnership will mark collaboration between the two teams, offering advantages to other ARK developers such as the ability to develop their own blockchain with ARK Core, and then deploy their blockchain’s native application to nOS.

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