The public chain track is always full of highlights. 

Last year, the DeFi ecosystem rose, and the number of NFT projects, GameFi games, and DeFi projects increased rapidly, which not only enlarged the asset scale of mainstream public chains, but also enabled the rapid development of emerging public chains, cross-chain projects, and Ethereum Layer2 ecology.

The multi-chain era has arrived. As the Polkadot parachain slot auction is approaching, established cross-chain projects are also facing a new competitive environment.

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Heterogeneous public chain against EVM

At present, the importance of cross-chain is self-evident.

DeFi has played a strong role in promoting cross-chain demand. Among the products with strong financial attributes on the chain, there is a very strong demand for circulation and mutual transfer, which requires extremely high communication and interconnection between chains.

The DeFi ecosystem first expanded in the Ethereum ecosystem. At present, thousands of teams based on different application requirements have developed a large number of businesses, which has established the irreproducibility of the Ethereum ecosystem. However, due to the congestion of the Ethereum network, Layer2 and other expansion methods And derivative products came into being, and promoted the personalized development direction of the non-Ethereum public chain.

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(Data source: defillama)

The DeFi boom that started in the first half of 2020 has led to the successive emergence of concepts such as "explosive" DeFi, NFT, GameFi games, and Metaverse on different public chains and smart chains. These unique products have intensified users' cross-chain needs. After that, more and more technology developers also followed this trend, seeking better cross-chain solutions among various isomorphic public chains, Yicheng public chains, Ethereum Layer2 and other projects.

In the long run, mainstream public chains and multi-chain ecology grow together, and more and more cross-chain solutions are connecting different public chains and Ethereum Layer 2. The rapid increase of these solutions, and even the expansion of Ethereum, are not so urgent.

Polkadot, the head team of cross-chain technology, was born a few years ago when the public chain ecology was initially prosperous. Cross-chain technology was called the key breakthrough point of blockchain technology under the background at that time. The problem of islands among them is to try to exchange data between applications in a more complete system to form a benign ecology.

Polkadot proposes a flexible heterogeneous multi-chain system, with "shared security" and "cross-chain interaction capabilities" as the main features, so that the scalability of the blockchain can be amplified. After a long period of development, the upcoming November 11th is the planned time for the Polkadot parachain auction. This made Polkadot usher in another wave of enthusiasm.

At present, to some extent, Polkadot's competitive environment has changed. What it is facing is a world full of various EVM chains, Ethereum Layer 2 ecology, cross-chain bridge projects, and EVM-compatible solutions. emerging public chains.

After sorting out these projects that are dealing with cross-chain requirements, you can see that Ethereum Layer2 solutions including Arbitrum, Optimism, etc., EVM isomorphic chains including BSC, Polygon, including Multichain.xyz, Poly Network Its cross-chain bridge technical team, as well as heterogeneous public chains such as NEAR, Solana, and Fantom, which actively adopt EVM compatibility solutions, have ushered in a phased period of rapid development.

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EVM Ecosystem: Limitations and Improvements

While Layer2 is developing rapidly, the development of EVM products has become a concept of its own. In overseas community discussions, the technical improvement and application development of the EVM system is likely to become the next technical focus.

EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) is the abbreviation of "Ethereum Virtual Machine". As a programmable blockchain. Ethereum allows users to create their own operations, and its core lies in the EVM, which can execute code of arbitrary algorithmic complexity. Developers can use the programming language (Solidity) to create applications that run on the EVM.

In the first half of 2020, the DeFi concept took off. Many developers have suspended the long-standing debate on the details of the underlying technology of the public chain, and turned to improving user experience and improving the liquidity of Ethereum applications. How to be compatible with EVM becomes an important point. For users, the advantages of EVM-compatible chains include lower gas fees, fast settlement speed, and the same address format as Ethereum, making the operating environment more friendly.

The effect of this approach is obvious: In the second half of 2020, many smart public chains have emerged one after another, promoting the new cross-chain camp of EVM. Compared with continuing to adjust and migrate across chains, technical teams and users began to choose BSC, HECO, etc. smart chain. Relying on resource advantages and user groups, these products have entered a period of rapid development. After the smart public chain is compatible with EVM, it quickly "copied" the entire DeFi ecology of Ethereum, including stable coins, Swap, lending, asset management, etc., to expand its own DeFi ecology.

At the same time, NEAR, Fantom, Avalanche, Substrate and other innovative blockchains are also rapidly entering the EVM, becoming high-performance shards in the multi-chain Ethereum ecosystem. Many public chains are actively compatible with EVM to gain more developers and users. Similarly, these public chains also benefit from EVM, avoiding the spillover of ecological resources.

These other EVM-compatible public chains often have a clear positioning. For example, BSC is mainly based on self-built ecology, which has developed into a certain system; while Avalanche, Fantom, and Solana are more inclined to be compatible with EVM, and their own technical routes and ecosystems are also on the market. develop.

This trend will continue and intensify in 2021. The current Ethereum EVM is gradually becoming a global "standard", and compatibility with EVM is becoming a standard configuration for high-performance public chains. Compatibility has basically landed. EVM is mainly oriented to end users. For NFT, GameFi, micro-settlement, and Dapps that reduce user overhead, it is more suitable to be deployed on side chains or EVM-compatible public chains.

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"Multi-chain ecology" and "cross-chain dispute"

Polkadot is also adapting to this new cross-chain environment. In the recent signals that Polkadot has sent out, it is quite confident in supporting various public chains for cross-chain interaction. Through bridges or parallel chains, many mainstream public chains can be accessed.

At the same time, Polkadot's research on EVM is also continuing. The explosion of public chains after multiple public chains are compatible with EVM has become an effective reference for the rapid expansion of the ecology, which has laid a certain foundation for EVM to explode.

It is worth noting that after being compatible with EVM, Polkadot also proposed support for Wasm. Wasm VM is another virtual machine commonly used in blockchains. Wasm was originally designed as a virtual machine for browsers. With the expansion of Wasm usage scenarios, Wasm has become one of the more common formats. Public chains such as EOS, Cardano, and Ontotogy have also explored in this direction. eWasm is sometimes described by the community as "Ethereum's next-generation virtual machine."

Polkadot and many on-chain projects have chosen to be compatible with EVM and support Wasm at the same time. For Polkadot, the switch between EVM and Wasm may become a new technology focus.

Under the multi-chain parallel ecology, it is believed that there will be more technological improvements and market innovations on the old cross-chain products, Layer 1, Layer 2, compatible with EVM and other cross-chain theme-related tracks. These products may jointly promote DeFi The interoperability between them forms an ideal environment for the common prosperity of multi-chain ecology.