If you have ever sent money and thought "done", then you have probably experienced the biggest illusion in payments. In many traditional systems, what is perceived to be instant is often only a polite "message received" and not the final handoff. It is like ordering food and displaying you the receipt before the kitchen is even getting started with cooking. The receipt is good but it is not the meal.
This difference between "the message" and "the settlement" is where things get complicated - speed, cost and trust. Vanar Chain takes a different approach to the same problem: rather than sending the payment instructions through layers of intermediaries, Vanar Chain is focused on making the network point fast, predictable and verifiable, at the protocol level. Vanar describes itself as a Layer 1 that is focused on mass market adoption - and a key part of how it's positioning itself is based on two engineering decisions: fast block cadence and a fixed-fee model.
Speed From "message speed" to "completion speed"
Traditional networks of payments can be lightning fast on the front door. Swipe a card, tap on a phone or confirm a bank transfer and you will get an approval often within seconds. But there is a long story behind that bit. The majority of systems is based on a series of institutions, which do the balancing out of accounts in batches, resolving of disputes and application of fraud controls. The user sees the green check but within the system, all it is doing is sorting out who finally owes what, to whom and when.
A simpler explanation of Vanar's speed goal is that it is attempting to minimise the time between the action and confirmation by creating blocks often. In the documentation of Vanar, the block time has a maximum limit of 3 seconds which is made to ensure fast responses and that confirmations are almost instantaneous in a number of cases. The Vanar whitepaper also restates the 3-second target though and make it a basis for increased throughput through other design decisions such as a proposed gas limit per block.
There is a good analogy of train station. Traditional networks can be like an express train, when it comes to the first hop because you will have your "ticket" validated quite quickly. But, the actual delivery can be of the nature of a route having multiple transfers and a time-table. Vanar is trying to get more - more often trains so that fewer people are left waiting on the platform between steps.
Of course, it is not only the raw confirmation time that is important when it comes to speed. It is also concerned with the behaviour of a network when that network is loaded. For its adjustments to the protocol, Vanar explains that they are in the interest of speeding up confirmations and reducing costs, which is a direct reference to the fact that many chains do not become as pleasant when the demand spikes. In the context of payments that is important, because the user experience is fragile. People don't accept come back later for it is a purchase, game item or tiny creator payment.
Cost: no surprises of fees, percentage of fees
Cost is where traditional payments tend to come across like an invisible tax. Consumers may not be able to see it but businesses usually can and it can show up in the form of percent-based fees, fixed fees, markups of moving money across the border and "surprise" charges depending on the route that a payment takes. This is the reason that microtransactions, the idea of charging for some fraction of a cent for a digital action, is so hard to make work on old rails. If you are trying to sell a one-cent action you will have a system built for multi-dollar fees against you.
Vanar’s answer is fixed fees. Vanar proposes a model of anchoring transaction fees in terms of a dollar value, the goal of which is to keep the chain low cost, and make the cost of gas predictable for applications. The "Why Choose Vanar" part brags low costs as low as $0.0005 per transaction which makes this important for micro transactions and creates the impression of experiences close to being feeless to the end user.
That number is striking but more interesting is how Vanar attempts to keep it steady. Vanar explains the upgrade of the fees on the protocol level, based on the market value of the native gas token which is updated at a regular cadence i.e every 5 minutes. It also has a gas pricNG API publication so that developers can view the tiers of fees in terms of $VANRY at any given moment which is useful to you if you are building consumer apps and you cannot afford random cost spikes.
Vanar goes further to make the fees tiered. Everyday transactions including token transfers, swaps, minting, staking and bridging are considered to be on the bottom of the pyramid, even if targeting for the potentially $0.0005 level, and larger transactions which require more block space can be priced on the higher end in order to prevent abuse. This is an important design detail, in that it's not just about being cheap, it's about being cheap in a sustainable way, but not cheap in a way that allows for flooding the network.
Here to relate an analogy, it is just like toll road. Many traditional systems of payment, are similar to a toll, which changed, depending upon what you are carrying, and who is manning each gate on your journey. Vanar's fixed fee idea is closer to a toll chart on the entrance that gets updated on some time schedule - drivers have time to plan. For builders that is more often of value that to get the absolute lowest possible fee once in a while.
Trust: institutional and chargebacks & protocols rules vs. reputation
Trust is the most difficult comparison to make, as traditional payments and blockchains are made upon different assumptions. Traditional networks trust is to be like referees. They provide for dispute processes, reversability in some cases and a well understood legal framework. You are trusting that the institutions are in a position to correct their mistakes, that they can stop the fraud and unwind the transactions, when it is necessary.
Blockchains flip that model. In this case, on a normal transfer on-chain, finality is a feature and not a bug. The system is designed in such way that, once a transaction is confirmed it is extremely difficult for reversing it. That type of trust is more "rulebook trust" and less "referee trust". You have a faith that we will have the same rules applied all the time, and the validators of the network are following the rules.
Vanar's trust design is interesting in particular for making no pretense about irrelevance of reputation. Vanar documents a hybrid consensus mechanism which is mostly Proof of Authority which is supplemented by a mechanism of Proof of Reputation. The documentation say that the Vanar Foundation first operate validator nodes and Proof of Reputation is part of the system of adding validators through a process focussed on reputation.
In simple words what Vanar is implying is that trust can be bettered if validators are not anonymous "anyone", but entities whose standing is significant as reputation costs dearly to lose. Think of this like the market place where the sellers have to accumulate reviews with time. Anonymous sellers can melt away after being scammed but known sellers have something to protect.
Vanar further talks about introduction of delegated participation in form of staking, and talks about Delegated Proof of Stake as a complement of its hybrid model. That is important to trust in another way, it is empowering to the community at large to be a part of the network security and growth, rather than putting the responsibility in the hands of a closed group of actors.
Then there is less vociferous form of trust which is of concern to builders - operational trust. Predictable performance, predictable fees and stable user experience is another type of trust. Vanar particularly refers to fixed fees as one way to ensure stable costs even when the network is busy, which is a promise of app builders that can be translated to trust from users.
Putting it together What better payments may mean
When you are pitting Vanar Chain against traditional payment networks it helps to stop asking which one is "better" and start asking which one is better for a particular job.
Traditional networks remain bright, in case you require reversible payments and good consumer dispute provisions as well as system based on institution guarantees. They were designed to deal with the messy human reality like fraud, refunds and errors.
If you need little payments, on-chain actions and apps wherein speed and predictable cost are the product experience then Vanar's thesis will be compelling. A three second block cadence will make digital actions feel interactive yet have a target charge of low (0.0005) can make microtransactions feel real in a way that many rails of older age were never intended to allow. Add to this the importance placed on Proof of Authority that is governed by reputation plus the participation of the community for staking and you have a trust model that is meant to be actionable as opposed to ideological.
In the end, shunting money around is not what payments is all about. They are all about the movement of confidence. The traditional networks are gaining confidence in terms of institutions and policies. Vanar is trying to generate assurance through protocol design: More fast confirmations, fixed fees, a validator model, in which reputation is important.
That is the real comparison. One world says, "(Trust us) we'll do something about it if it does go wrong." The second one is, the rules, trust to them, and make the system do such a way that there are fewer things to go wrong in the first place.
Not financial advice.