We should start to imagine a multi-chain era with application chain
Editor's Note: This article comes fromBlock beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Block beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats)
Block beats BlockBeats (ID: BlockBeats)
, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
The matter of cross-chain seems to be mentioned again.
However, unlike the hype in 2019, the current chain does have cross-demand.
For players, there is no need to repeat the performance issues of Ethereum. Everyone has personal experience, and the three words "noble chain" can be summed up incisively enough.
So solutions began to appear, but after sorting out the current status quo, I found that there is still a demand for cross-chain, because multi-chain seems inevitable.
Looking at multi-chain from the perspective of expansion
First look at the current status of Ethereum.
All for expansion, Layer-2 solutions are basically identified as the highest priority.
However, DeFi applications rely heavily on the composition of applications, but the cross-domain interaction between Layer 2 networks is still an unsolved problem. Of course, teams like Celer Network have already proposed solutions.
But judging from the current second-tier trend, it is very likely that the leading DeFi projects will move into the same general second-tier network in groups, and then the ecology will continue to expand around the leading projects. However, the throughput of a single layer-2 network is ultimately unable to satisfy the rapidly expanding DeFi user base.
This gives a prerequisite for multi-chain.
So we saw Solana, Near, Avalanche, and even BSC. These public chains that have appeared successively, regardless of whether they support EVM or not, they all have one thing in common: they all support the cross-chain of Ethereum.
Solana has a "wormhole" cross-chain bridge, Near has a "rainbow" bridge, and BSC has a gateway.
Placeholder partner Chris Burniske recently tweeted that the realization of the multi-chain form now reminds me of PoS in 2016/17. People are realizing that multi-chain is the way of the future, although it will take some time to realize it on a large scale.
In the multi-chain era, not only public chains represented by smart contracts can exist, but also new models, such as application chains.
Appearance logic of application chain
It seems unrealistic to use a cosmic computer to lead people from Web2 to Web3, and the coexistence of multiple chains has become an inevitable trend. Polkadot and Cosmos, as cross-chain leaders, not only want to use cross-chain to solve the problem of expansion, but also provide a brand-new application implementation idea for the Web3 world-application chain.
Before discussing the implementation of future applications, let us review the development history of on-chain applications. As the first decentralized application on the chain, Bitcoin has opened up new ideas for innovative development of Web3.
Then people forked the Bitcoin code base to innovate payment-type on-chain applications to address the shortcomings of Bitcoin. However, due to the rigid architectural design of Bitcoin and poor scalability, it limits its room for innovation in non-payment applications. And at that time, different chains cannot interact, and there is no composability between applications.
With the advancement of technology, the new generation of smart contract public chain with performance far exceeding that of Ethereum provides developers with better infrastructure options. Various cross-chain bridges allow Ethereum assets to seamlessly shuttle across domains. Of course, under the new technical framework of Polkadot's Substrate and Cosmos' Cosmos SDK, developers can also customize a dedicated blockchain for applications quickly and with low threshold. With the help of the general cross-chain communication protocol IBC, under the same framework Chain-to-chain interaction is no longer a problem.
From bifurcating Bitcoin to smart contracts to application chains, the way of application innovation is constantly iterating. Smart contracts and application chains are by no means antagonistic, and applications will choose according to their own needs.
Implement applications with smart contracts
According to Electric Capital's 2020 developer report, the monthly active developers of Ethereum have increased by 215% in the past three years, and reached 2,325 monthly active developers by the end of 2020, far exceeding the Bitcoin community (361 monthly active developers). ). 925 of the 2,325 Ethereum developers are active in the DeFi space.
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Image source: Electric Capital Developer Report (2020)
In the figure, we can see that compared with the third quarter of 2020, the number of people in the Ethereum development community increased the most in the third quarter of 2019, far exceeding other technical communities. The growth of the Polkadot technical community is also very impressive, and other technical communities remain almost unchanged. . From the perspective of the number of active developers, the total number of active developers on Ethereum exceeds the sum of the number of active developers in other technical communities."An active technical community has created a rich application ecosystem. According to statistics from State of the Dapps, as of February 2021, there will be 2,579 decentralized applications on Ethereum."The platform effect and network effect of Ethereum make the smart contract ecology of Ethereum form a positive spiral development. First of all, developers are more willing to develop in the form of smart contracts on Ethereum. The mature infrastructure and ecology allow applications on Ethereum to have more interactive options. Richer interactions may mean unlimited imagination of application scenarios , especially applications like DeFi that value composability. At the same time, the network effect of Ethereum has also made the Solidity language more popular with developers. Secondly, from the perspective of users, Ethereum provides a full range of application options, and users only need to interact with the single network of Ethereum to meet all needs. The increase in users has in turn attracted more developers to enter. From the perspective of capital, capital is more inclined to invest in mature ecology with low risk. Ethereum has incubated countless high-quality assets, which also makes more and more capital surround the ecology of Ethereum.
From another perspective, applications implemented with smart contracts can enjoy the security guarantee of the underlying public chain, but applications in the same system need to share limited computing and processing resources, which is also the performance bottleneck of the smart contract public chain. At the same time, this also limits the diversity of Web3 applications. Due to the limited resources on the chain, active applications are limited to DeFi applications that can generate money-making effects. Secondly, due to the high cost, these applications can only create more wealth for large investors with a large amount of capital. This also means that those non-DeFi applications that have no users are more marginalized, and retail investors without a large amount of principal cannot participate in the wealth-creating game of DeFi.
At the same time, in order to protect the verifiability of processing logic, smart contract platforms usually do not allow smart contracts to be upgraded, because developers unilaterally modify smart contracts will destroy verifiable fairness. This also makes the governance of smart contracts another bottleneck for decentralized applications. The most critical point is that the smart contract belongs to
one size fits all
In other words, smart contract applications need to be compromised according to the underlying framework. Developers cannot fully realize specific application requirements. For example, some applications require specific consensus protocols, virtual machines or governance environments, which cannot be met by smart contract public chains. of.
Compared with smart contracts, application chains are much more optional. Both the Cosmos SDK of Cosmos and the Substrate of Polkadot provide developers with a modular framework. Developers can customize or replace each module according to the needs of the application to create a dedicated blockchain for the application.
references:
Smart Contracts vs. Application-Specific Blockchains
