Elements is an open-source, sidechain-capable blockchain platform that provides access to powerful features developed by community members, such as Confidential Transactions and Issued Assets.

Elements, at its core, is a protocol that enables consensus to be formed around the transaction history and rules governing the transfer and creation of assets stored in a distributed blockchain ledger.

More background information on Elements can be found readily on the Elements Project website (https://elementsproject.org/), the official Liquid blog (https://blog.liquid.net/), and the developer portal(https://liquid.net/devs).

Launched in 2015, Elements reduces internal development and research costs and harnesses the latest blockchain technology, opening up numerous new use cases for implementation. An Elements-based blockchain can operate as either a standalone Blockchain or be pegged to another and run as a Sidechain. Running Elements as a Sidechain enables assets to be verifiably transferred between different blockchains.

Built upon and extending Bitcoin's codebase, it lets developers familiar with the bitcoind API quickly and cost-effectively create working blockchains and test proof-of-concept projects. Being built on the Bitcoin codebase also allows Elements to function as a testbed for changes to the Bitcoin protocol itself.

Some of the main features of Elements are listed next.

By default, all addresses in Elements are blinded using Confidential Transactions. Blinding is the process by which the amount and type of asset being transferred is cryptographically hidden from everyone, except the participants and those they choose to reveal the blinding key to.

Issued Assets on Elements enables the issuance and transfer of multiple asset types between network participants. An Issued Asset also benefits from Confidential Transactions and can be reissued or destroyed by anyone holding the relevant reissuance token.

Elements is a general-purpose blockchain platform that can also be “pegged” to an existing blockchain (such as Bitcoin) in order to enable the two-way transfer of assets from one chain to the other. Implementing Elements as a sidechain allows you to work around some of the inherent properties of the main chain, while retaining a good degree of the security provided by assets secured on the main chain.

Elements uses a Strong Federation of signatories, called Block Signers, who sign and create blocks in a reliable and timely manner. This removes the transaction latency of the PoW mining process, which is subject to large block time variance due to its random Poisson distribution. The Federated Block Signing process achieves reliable block creation without introducing the need for third-party trust or computational algorithm based mining.

Elements adds all these features on top of the Bitcoin Core codebase, extending the ability of the mainchain protocol and enabling new business use cases when deployed as a sidechain or as a standalone blockchain solution.