Nervos launched Godwoken, an expansion solution, embracing the Ethereum ecosystem

Entering 2021, the competition in the public chain field has evolved from a purely underlying technology competition to a competition for ecology and developers. Since the earliest BSC, the EVM-compatible strategy has been tried and tested. After all, developers prefer to use programming languages ​​they are familiar with, and Ethereum actually has the most prosperous application ecosystem.

Recently, even public chains like Solana, which were developed without relying on EVM, have begun to be compatible with EVM through Neon. It can be seen that at least in the short term, EVM has become the de facto "Windows operating system" of the public chain industry. Even though it is born with many defects, it is still an indispensable function that cannot be bypassed by all public chain platforms.

Nervos, which was born in 2019, recently launched Godwoken, an EVM-compatible Layer 2 expansion solution, officially embracing developers in the Ethereum ecosystem.

However, if it is only compatible with EVM, it will generally only have a certain promotion effect on the public chain ecology in the short term. As we have seen with Polygon, if the public chain platform itself lacks unique advantages, it is still difficult to compete with other public chains for a long time.

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UTXO-based smart contract public chain

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(1) Account system

The uniqueness of Nervos in the choice of technical route is first reflected in its lowest-level account system. At present, the account models of each public chain are mainly divided into two categories. One is the account model represented by Ethereum and adopted by most smart contract public chains.

The Account model is actually very easy to understand, just like the bank accounts we use every day, each account retains the balance of funds in it. In the smart contract public chain, these account balances are also called states. The smart contracts built on it can easily call these states and program them to build various complex smart contracts.

This Account-based account model seems to be more in line with people's intuition, and it seems that it should be the only existing account system solution. Therefore, most of the blockchain platforms that support smart contracts have adopted this seemingly more intuitive account system.

However, what Nervos adopts is a more unique UTXO model. The Cell model of Nervos is a generalization of the UTXO model. The full name of UTXO is Unspent Transaction Output. This account system was first invented and used by Bitcoin. Although UTXO is more orthodox in the blockchain industry, apart from Bitcoin, there are very few mainstream public chains that truly adopt this model today.

Especially for ordinary users, this model seems difficult to understand, let alone understand its unique advantages. Therefore, here we need to put aside complicated technical vocabulary and reinterpret the UTXO model.

Similar to comparing the Account model to a bank account, the UTXO model is more like banknotes in our daily life.

Yes, the wallets we use every day to store cash do not have the concept of account balance. There are only banknotes of different denominations (so-called UTXO) in each wallet that stores banknotes. When payment is required, we select some suitable "UTXOs" from them, and put back the change paid by the other party at the same time. into the wallet. And when you need to count your wallet balance, you only need to add up the total amount of all "UTXO" in the wallet.

So what are the benefits of this account system? For a smart contract platform, the biggest advantage of using the UTXO account model is that it can be programmed for assets.

Unlike Ethereum, which can only program the balance of the account (that is, the so-called state), Nervos using UTXO allows developers to program the banknote assets (that is, UTXO) in each wallet, which gives developers Provides great flexibility.

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(2) Capacity expansion plan

The expansion of the blockchain is undoubtedly an undisputed and urgent need in the industry. However, the specific solution to achieve expansion has always been a controversial topic. According to the roadmap of Ethereum 2.0, Ethereum has always taken sharding as the main direction to achieve expansion.

However, as the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade plan has been postponed again and again, people have gradually begun to realize that they may have estimated the difficulty of sharding too optimistically. Therefore, in October last year, the Ethereum Foundation revised the roadmap for Ethereum expansion, basically abandoning the goal of achieving sharding in the near future, and instead adopting layered expansion technology to solve the current problem faster. The urgent need for transaction speed.

It can be said that Ethereum went around in a circle in the direction of expansion, but finally returned to the technical path selected by Nervos in 2018.

At the very beginning of the project, Nervos had thought deeply about the direction of future expansion. Just like the technology stack that makes up the current Internet, the future of blockchain is bound to develop in a layered direction. Therefore, as a low-level public chain, the first thing to consider is not how to realize all the functions that the blockchain needs to realize on Layer 1, but to lay a solid technical foundation for the future Layer 2 from the very beginning.

Therefore, compared with Ethereum, Nervos not only has a first-mover advantage in supporting Layer 2 expansion, but also naturally stands on a higher technical starting point.

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Ethereum Compatibility Layer Godwoken

As we have mentioned above, the Nervos public chain adopting the UTXO model has acquired the ability of asset-oriented programming, but also paid a certain price. Once the project developed by the developer involves voting, crowdfunding and other functions that need to integrate the global state, the state separation caused by the UTXO model will greatly increase the difficulty of development.

But fortunately, the above-mentioned problems caused by state separation can be completely solved. In Nervos, the project team used a solution similar to Rollup to develop an account model-based Layer 2 that is more friendly to developers on the underlying architecture of UTXO, which is the Godwoken that this article needs to introduce in detail.

Through Godwoken development, developers can share the global state more easily without being subject to many restrictions brought by UTXO, allowing developers to enjoy the advantages of asset-oriented development while avoiding the increase in development costs caused by state separation . In this way, developers can develop applications with more familiar ideas, and finally achieve the goal of being compatible with EVM virtual machines.

In fact, for most ordinary readers, Godwoken can be directly and approximately understood as an EVM-compatible chain with Nervos as the main chain.

Optimistic Rollup extension layer. Other mature projects in the Ethereum ecosystem can be directly deployed on Godwoken with only a small amount of code changes.

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Godwoken's launch plan

Godwoken has launched the Mainnet Beta, and some projects have entered the official Nervos whitelist.

Currently, YokaiSwap, the first Godwoken-based decentralized trading platform, has been deployed on Godwoken. It can be seen that YokaiSwap has a trading interface similar to the Ethereum ecosystem, and can log in directly through Metamask. Its operating experience is already very close to the mainstream EVM public chain trading platform. YokaiSwap has completed ID0 on December 1, and will launch the mainnet on December 3. Interested readers can experience it by themselves.

The current competition between public chains has gradually entered a white-hot stage. Nervos, which had been silent for a long time, also caught up with Godwoken. Among the many EVM-compatible public chains, many rely on market operations, high subsidies, etc., and even fork well-known projects to promote ecological construction. However, Nervos has always adhered to the development direction of technology first, focusing on building long-term value. I believe that with the launch of Godwoken, the Nervos ecosystem will be better developed.