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DAG: A New Paradigm for Distributed Ledgers Beyond Blockchain

In the cryptocurrency world, blockchain technology is well-known. However, a data structure called Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) is emerging as a potential alternative solution, offering new insights into solving blockchain’s scalability bottlenecks.

In simple terms, DAG is a model that uses vertices (or nodes) and directed edges to represent data and their relationships. The term “directed” means edges have direction, while “acyclic” means it’s impossible to start from a vertex, follow directed edges, and eventually return to that vertex, forming a closed loop. In cryptocurrency applications, each vertex represents a transaction, and each directed edge represents the confirmation relationship between transactions.

How Does DAG Work? Transactions as Consensus

The operating mechanism of DAG differs fundamentally from blockchain:

• No block structure: Transactions are no longer packaged into blocks and linked sequentially. When a new transaction is issued, it directly confirms and links to multiple previously existing transactions. The entire ledger thus forms a constantly expanding, interwoven “network.”
• Transactions as consensus: In many DAG implementations, initiating a new transaction itself requires validating previous transactions. This means network participants indirectly participate in consensus by initiating transactions, thereby eliminating the need for traditional miners or validators, theoretically enabling zero transaction fees and high throughput.
• Parallel processing: Since transactions are not linked in a chain, multiple transaction chains can grow and confirm simultaneously, enabling parallel processing, which is key to its high scalability.

Core Comparison Between DAG and Blockchain

Major DAG Cryptocurrency Projects and Market Performance

Currently, representative cryptocurrencies adopting DAG technology in the market mainly include the following projects:

1. IOTA (MIOTA): Designed specifically for the Internet of Things, its core “Tangle” is a DAG structure. Aims to enable machine-to-machine feeless micropayments and secure data transmission. Current price on Gate is $0.2475, with approximately $28,000,000 trading volume in the past 24 hours.
2. Nano (XNO): Focused on instant, feeless value transfer. Its “block lattice” structure allocates an independent microblockchain to each user account, with these chains asynchronously interacting through a DAG structure. Current price on Gate is $1.532, with approximately $12,000,000 trading volume in the past 24 hours.
3. Hedera (HBAR): While not a typical DAG, its Hashgraph consensus algorithm is an asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (ABFT) DAG variant, renowned for high efficiency and deterministic finality. Current price on Gate is $0.0987, with trading volume exceeding $85,000,000 in the past 24 hours.

Advantages and Challenges of DAG Technology

Advantages:

• High scalability and throughput: Parallel processing enables transaction processing capacity to strengthen with network usage.
• Low latency and zero fees: Free from block time constraints, suitable for high-frequency micropayment scenarios.
• Excellent energy efficiency: Usually requires no energy-intensive mining, aligning with green technology trends.

Challenges:

• Security verification: Compared to blockchain’s “longest chain rule” such as Bitcoin, DAG’s consensus mechanisms (like “cumulative weight”) are more complex, and large-scale security requires further verification.
• Centralization risks: Some DAG projects in early stages may establish coordinator nodes to bootstrap the network, raising concerns about decentralization.
• Ecosystem and application maturity: Its development tools, smart contract functionality (some projects unsupported), and overall application ecosystem still lag far behind mature blockchain platforms like Ethereum.

Future Outlook: Parallel Coexistence Rather Than Replacement

DAG technology is not a “killer” of blockchain, but rather an important supplement and extension. It is particularly suitable for scenarios extremely sensitive to throughput, real-time performance, and transaction fees, such as IoT micropayments, high-frequency trading, and in-game economies.

In the future, we may see the emergence of hybrid architectures, such as using DAG as a Layer 2 scaling solution for blockchain, or processing specific types of transactions using DAG under a single main chain, thereby combining the advantages of both.