The most unique feature of Syscoin is its ability to combine the strongest elements of Bitcoin and Ethereum on a single platform. Syscoin's layer 1 consensus is based on Bitcoin’s SHA-256 PoW model and allows merged mining with Bitcoin. This means that miners can simultaneously mine both BTC and SYS at no extra cost. Comparing Syscoin's hashrate to Bitcoin's it can be seen that generally over 50% of Bitcoin's hashrate also mines Syscoin and that it is supported by several larger Bitcoin pools. Syscoin also provides decentralized finality on top of Nakamoto consensus which effectively eliminates the risks of 51% attacks normally associated with PoW while also retaining proven Nakamoto consensus from beneath. Moreover, Syscoin is modular layer 1 that supports optimistic rollups and ZK rollups, and provides them a low-cost data availability service that is censorship resistant called PoDA. The first layer 2 built on Syscoin is a fork of Optimism called Rollux, an EVM-equivalent optimistic rollup that went live on June 28, 2023, built by SYS Labs. The Rollux ecosystem is Syscoin's primary target for ecosystem growth as it provides scalability with a fast and low-cost user experience.
In sum, Syscoin's technology today effectively provides what Ethereum plans to provide in the future with its modular roadmap, including data availability, while retaining Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work.
The network utilizes incentivized full nodes (masternodes) to serve multi-quorum chainlocks for finality. You can find out more about the incentives and requirements to run a Syscoin masternode at sysnode.info.
As for Syscoin's overall layer 1 architecure, it is dual-chain with a modular (rollup-centric) design. This architecture consists of an Ethereum-based blockchain called Network Enhanced Virtual Machine (NEVM), released December 6, 2021, which is compatible with any smart contracts or rollups built for Ethereum. The other blockchain is called Syscoin UTXO or "Syscoin Native", which is a Bitcoin-based blockchain supporting taproot, data availability, a token platform supporting ordinals and both fungible and non-fungible tokens, a proprietary DAG protocol called Z-DAG, and more. Overall, the architecture enables users and developers to leverage the strengths of each "gold standard" model (Bitcoin and Ethereum) while creating new synergies between them where appropriate, such as PoDA. Both of the Syscoin blockchains, as well as Rollux, utilize SYS as their native coin. SYS is utility-focused coin based on EIP-1559. SYS owners can transfer SYS between these chains via the Syscoin Bridge and the Rollux Portal.