Expansion is currently the biggest proposition of the underlying public chain, and various public chain teams are trying different expansion solutions. Generally speaking, the expansion ideas are roughly divided into on-chain and off-chain.
The idea of on-chain expansion is mainly to change the two directions of consensus algorithm/data structure or sharding, which we can call Layer 1 scheme. For example, Hyperledger's PBFT and EOS's DPoS often sacrifice some decentralization; IOTA and byteball use a data structure different from the DAG (directed acyclic graph) of the blockchain.And Hashgraph。
The problem with changing the consensus algorithm is that the bottleneck of the Impossible Triangle has not yet been broken through, and most public chain projects strike a balance between the three. As for sharding technology, Odaily recently contacted Celer NetworkCo-founder Dong Mo believes that "the more difficult problem of sharding is to turn linear things into parallel." Therefore, the Celer Network team believes that there is a ceiling for expansion on the chain. If the blockchain is to enter thousands of Tens of thousands of households need to take out the consensus process.
This brings up another idea of expansion, off-chain expansion, also known as Layer 2, including side chains and state channels. For example, Bitcoin's Lightning Network, Ethereum's Thunderbolt Network and Plasma, Taxa reported by Odaily. The Celer to be introduced in this article,Positioning is the off-chain scalability solution。
Let’s first talk about the difference between sidechains and state channels.
First of all, Dong Mo said that the side chain is to record the state. The side chain state is anchored to the main chain through the root hash. Generally, it has its own consensus mechanism, and there are many people involved. The time is extended but the capacity is large; the state channel does not Definitely, only the consent of the participant is required. "We can send messages to each other, as long as we pass, we pass." Payment channels such as the Lightning Network are a type of state channel. There is a bound smart contract on the chain, and both parties to the transaction deposit deposits in it, and then open a payment channel off the chain, and then update the co-signed message To the main chain, the main chain will always only recognize the latest state of the common signature.
Therefore, the advantage of state channels is low latency. When talking about the expansion of the public chain, many people will use the concept of TPS (Transactions per Second), Dong Mo believes that this is actually an incomplete indicator. "It tells you an average, 10,000 TPS sounds powerful, but it doesn't mean that each transaction is completed in one ten thousandth of a second, assuming that 100,000 transactions are processed in 10 seconds, each is processed in 10 seconds It is also 10,000 TPS, but each user has to wait for 10 seconds, and the blockchain application is still useless." In fact, the time required for each transaction, that is, the concept of "delay" is equally important.
Celer Network combines state channels and side chains, which utilizes the low-latency characteristics of state channels and provides the possibility for developers to use side chains.
The following involves the specific architecture design of Celer Network:
The underlying cChannel is a generic state channel and sidechain suite, the basic role providesOn-chain and off-chain transitions and connections, responsible for channel creation and management. cChannel supports multiple public chains, and plans to connect multiple public chains to the same off-chain network in the future. Dong Mo said that Celer has designed a pure off-chain contract, which does not need to bind smart contracts on the chain, but only needs to have an account on the chain, and can still ensure the security of the entire system when one party does evil.
On top of cChannel is the smart contract state routing layer cRoute. cRoute assumes the function of an efficiency engine, mainly to achieve efficient off-chain value transfer, in short, "choose which route is the best". cRoute is arguably the best routing algorithm for off-chain state channel networks. The "traffic flow" (amount of funds) that each channel can carry depends on the size of the deposit. Once the shortest path is blocked (carrying capacity is exhausted), opening a new road requires more resources, so it may be better to detour The way. This is a bit like a credit transfer process, A→C can not only go directly, but also A→B, B→C.The algorithm of cRoute will dynamically calculate the best path, which is one of the core reasons why Celer Network can achieve fast speed(The specific algorithm can be seen inCeler Whitepaper）。
The upper level iscOS, a set of development program framework and operating environment. This layer provides an SDK for developers, so that they don't need to spend too much energy on maintaining the state on the chain, and can focus on writing the logic of the App. For example, cOS will handle the tracking, storage and dispute resolution of the state on the chain, and the call relationship between the states on and off the chain.
On the top is App/cApp. Apps developed on Celer Network can have extremely low latency, thus improving user experience. There are two types of apps on this layer. One is that smart contracts are bound to the main chain, but they can run in the off-chain state channel, and the state between participants is consistent; the other is the pure virtual contract mentioned above. Contracts are deployed directly between participants without binding smart contracts on the chain.
After introducing the architecture of Celer Network, the question we may think of is,At present, the biggest problem of off-chain network is liquidity and security. this is alsoThe Lightning Network is currently being questionedMost of the problems Celer Network tries to solve with its token mechanism, named cEconomy.
Flow refers to the locking of the deposit. For channel service providers (OSP, Off-chain Service Providers, responsible for the transfer of transactions,node"node"character of), opening a state channel requires a lot of deposits, which becomes a "capital barrier". Celer Network supports liquidity auctions through smart contracts, which is a bit like a P2P matching platform. "I don't have enough ETH, I can ask others to borrow it." In this process, the role of Celer Token is a bit like a bidding ranking. For example, the system will rank according to the interest provided by the liquidity provider. If the interest is similar, whoever has more Celer Token locked in the network will get this loan opportunity. The mining method to obtain Celer Token is "lock-up mining".Incentivize network liquidity fund providers to lock personal idle funds (such as ETH, BTC, etc.), the longer the locked amount and time, the more Celer Tokens will be mined.
Security is about state availability. Dong Mo said that if one party suddenly goes offline during the off-chain transaction, the transaction may fail or be interrupted, and the other party may even take this opportunity to do evil.
At this time, you need to hire a neutral third party to take care of it for you. This is the status guardian. If the user knows that the service they are dealing with is very important, you will pay a part of the money (stable currency) as a task gold in the state guardian network. Once you are offline, the system will randomly assign guardians to you based on certain rules. The number is based on The proportion of the task gold you submit is determined. At this time, Celer Token is like a credential for working rights. To become a state guardian, Celer Token needs to be pledged. The more pledged, the greater the possibility of being selected.
To sum up, there are four types of participants in cEconomy: users, payment service providers, liquidity providers, and state guardians.
Currently, the Celer Network project is still under development, and an MVP has been released, allowing users to play backgammon. The team plans to release an Ethereum wallet in October, and some games will be embedded in the wallet. The team is now about 14 people, mainly technical staff. Its core team comes from UIUC, Princeton University, MIT, etc., and has worked in Internet companies such as Google, Amazon, Oracle, Cisco, and HP.
Celer Network has reached partnerships with several public chains, including Qtum, Aelf, QuarkChain and IoTex. On Ethereum,Celer has reached a strategic cooperation with L4 Ventures, to jointly establish the Ethereum off-chain expansion standard. Celer Network said that it will continue to expand new public chain partners in the future.
Co-founder Dong Mo obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from UIUC in 2017. His research direction focuses on distributed systems and networks. He is an early evangelist and investor in the blockchain industry.VeriflowI am Lu Xiaoming, editor of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add WeChat lohiuming for breaking news and communication. Please note your name, unit, position and reason.
I am Lu Xiaoming, editor of Odaily. I am exploring the real blockchain. Please add WeChat lohiuming for breaking news and communication. Please note your name, unit, position and reason.
