"Polkadot Knowledge Graph" is our entry-level article on Polkadot from zero to one. We try to start from the most basic part of Polkadot and provide you with a comprehensive understanding of Polkadot. Of course, this is a huge project. Engineering is also full of challenges. However, we hope that through such efforts, everyone can correctly understand Polkadot, and people who do not know Polkadot can easily and quickly grasp Polkadot-related knowledge. Today is the 23rd issue of this column. Understand the BEEFY consensus that few people pay attention to in the Polkadot network.

What happened to Polkadot's cross-chain?

As the most eye-catching project in the cross-chain direction, Polkadot has always been concerned about its cross-chain process. The Polkadot parachain slot auction is in progress, which also means that the isomorphic cross-chain between parachains is no longer a big problem. But like those non-Substrate public chains that are not parallel chains, how to link to Polkadot? In fact, there are already teams working on the transfer bridges of Bitcoin and Ethereum. The transfer bridge is a special kind of parallel chain, which cross-chains with mature public chains, and then interacts with other parallel chains to achieve these mature The public chain can also be accessed.

Taking the introduction of Bitcoin into the Polkadot ecosystem as an example, Interlay is the team that built PolkaBTC, a trustless Bitcoin cross-chain bridge PolkaBTC, to protect the cross-chain bridge through decentralized and stable Bitcoin prices and fees.

PolkaBTC is unique in its strict commitment to trustlessness and decentralization. This cross-chain bridge has no central authority control. PolkaBTC has been run from the beginning by a decentralized network of individuals, community members and businesses.

Second, anyone can participate in the operation of this cross-chain bridge, and can become a maintainer of this cross-chain bridge and start earning fees without obtaining a license or any additional tokens. Earlier, the software development company Snowfork also cooperated with the researchers and developers of the Web3 Foundation to build a two-way bridge between Polkadot and Ethereum, and finally deliver direct smart contract instructions.

The Polkadot official also invited Chainsafe to participate in the development of the Filecoin-substrate Bridge, which is the bridge from Filecoin to Substrate, which means that dApp developers can build Substrate into the Substrate chain that depends on the state of Filecoin.

A more general cross-chain solution?

It can be said that all major well-known projects have connected to Polkadot one after another, which can be described as a strong alliance. Not only can they obtain the security of Polkadot, but also maximize resources through Polkadot.

But there is also a problem. The technology of each project is not exactly the same, and it is not so convenient to connect with each other. At this time, if there is a general solution, the above problems can be solved. Thus, BEEFY came into being. The BEEFY consensus is also called the BEEFY protocol, and its full name is Bridge Efficiency Enabling Finality Yielder, which is an auxiliary protocol that runs with GRANDPA to support more efficient bridging with non-Substrate blockchains.

postscript

postscript

At present, BEEFY is still being perfected, but the Polkadot ecosystem has already made preparations in advance for the integration of some of the most well-known public chains (BTC/ETH/Filecoin). But the real future of Polkadot is still the sea of ​​stars, and strive to connect all blockchain projects to Polkadot.

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