Core Objectives and Principles

Core is a decentralized, secure, and scalable blockchain network backed by Bitcoin’s PoW. This section covers these (and other) important properties of the Core network, and briefly touches on how each is maintained.

• Bitcoin-aligned: Core is strategically designed to (a) unlock Bitcoin’s protection by enabling Bitcoin miners to delegate their hash power to an EVM-compatible smart contract platform and allow BTC holders to participate in staking on Core without giving up custody. (b) Create deep alignment between Bitcoin and Core ecosystems through incentives. Bitcoin miners are rewarded with CORE tokens for hash power delegation, which involves no additional expense or opportunity cost. Meanwhile, bitcoin holders can take advantage of Core’s Non-Custodial BTC Staking, earning native yield while maintaining full control of their assets. For those seeking higher returns, Dual Staking provides an enhanced mechanism that boosts Bitcoin staking rewards by linking them to CORE staking, offering a powerful incentive to engage more deeply with the Core ecosystem. Core further gains enhanced security and a stronger commitment from the Bitcoin community to its blockchain ecosystem through delegated hash power. Through this integration, Core amplifies Bitcoin as a store of value while extending its utility as a scalable infrastructure for digital assets and decentralized applications.

• Decentralized: Core’s decentralization is facilitated through the three-part system by which validators are elected under Satoshi Plus consensus. First, Bitcoin miners can vote for validators by writing data into the coinbase transactions of newly mined Bitcoin blocks (DPoW). Second, through Non-Custodial BTC Staking, holders of BTC can stake natively on the Bitcoin network with validators on Core network without giving up custody. Finally, CORE token holders can vote for validators by delegating CORE to them (DPoS). Because Bitcoin hash power, Bitcoin token holders, and CORE tokens are highly distributed, the 3 fundamentals of Satoshi Plus consensus mechanism, DPoW, DPoS, and Non-Custodial BTC Staking, work together to uphold Core’s decentralization.

• Secure: Core’s security rests on several pillars. The first is the decentralization discussed above, which is achieved through a combination of DPoW, DPoS, and Non-Custodial BTC staking. The second is Core’s security model. The network can thwart consensus attacks through its incentive structures, which feature rewards for participants that identify malicious nodes and mechanisms for punishing those nodes, and it incorporates checkpointing and similar safeguards for preventing other kinds of long-range attacks. There is a more detailed treatment of security below, including audits from several top-tier blockchain security firms.

• Scalable: Core is highly scalable, capable of eventually supporting a global user base of billions of participants, with high transaction throughput and low latency. This is due in part to the fact that DPoS is inherently more scalable than either standard PoS or PoW, and in part to the fact that the network can increase the rate at which blocks are mined by adding many more validators. What’s more, there will be additional scaling solutions developed on top of the network in the future.

• Permissionless: Core’s permissionlessness means anyone can participate in and build on Core, without approval or authorization from any gatekeeping entity. The network’s decentralization, open-source software, and consensus model are designed to maintain this permissionlessness in perpetuity.

• Community Governed: Core’s governance is a blend of immutable and mutable components. The immutable aspects are those that must be kept in place, like the total supply of CORE. But other aspects of on-chain governance would benefit from adaptability. For those, the decentralized autonomous organization responsible for network development, Core DAO, is designed to become progressively more decentralized as on-chain participation grows. As of this writing all CORE token holders can vote on the direction of the project, but they may be limited by certain immutable aspects of Core’s design, described in further detail later.

• Interoperable: Core can interface with a wide variety of blockchain projects. Because it is EVM compatible all protocols on Core can interact with one another, Ethereum-based protocols can be ported to Core with relative ease, and cross-chain solutions allow communication across other blockchains.

• Composable: In Core, composability is achieved through support of the popular Solidity smart contract language. Solidity allows developers to create smart contracts that can call functions within other contracts, send CORE to them, and even create new contract instances. This allows for the building of complex interlocking systems of contracts able to facilitate peer-to-peer borrowing and lending, open liquidity pools, trading platforms, live, accurate on-chain data, and much more.