Odaily learned that,Distributed Communication Cloud Project「TOP Network"It has recently completed a cornerstone round of financing of US$6 million. Investors include Fenbushi Capital, Danhua Capital, NEO Global Capital, and Leading Capital.
TOP Network is a "chain reform" project. The team previously developed a distributed communication network and three apps based on it - Dingtone, a VoIP app; CoverMe, an end-to-end encrypted, ephemeral messaging app; and SkyVPN; 50 million registrations across the three products user.
The traditional communication solution is that either the developer invests in self-built infrastructure, or buys it from a professional service provider. For example, the recently popular "Bullet SMS" uses NetEase Yunxin's IM and audio and video PaaS (Platform as a Service) .
TOP distributed communication network is similar to PaaS. However, it adopts P2P communication and storage technology, which breaks the traditional client/central server model, allowing each client with idle bandwidth/hard disk to act as a server to serve other nodes, and can also use other nodes at low or even free prices. The node service significantly reduces costs and improves efficiency.
But for this network to run efficiently, it needs enough network nodes. Therefore, TOP wonders whether it can be made into a decentralized and autonomous system, allowing other developers to contribute and use it. This requires the use of public ledgers.
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TOP Network system architecture
According to Steve, the TOP Chain test network was launched in July and can currently achieve 2000 TPS. It is expected that the TOP Chain main network and VPN side chain will be launched by the end of the year.In order to be put into use after it goes online, it supports SkyVPN and other Dapps with 2 million daily active users. In terms of technical implementation, TOP Chain has assembled the current four mainstream expansion technologies. It is expected that when the mainnet goes onlineTPS reacheda few millions:
Three-layer architecture of main chain + business chain (also can be understood as side chain) + off-chain processor;
DAG double lattice data structure;
two-layer sharding;
Multi-layer consensus network.
In the design of TOP Chain,Main chain and business chainIndependent of each other, the main chain only provides transaction settlement; business chains can be created on demand, each business corresponds to a chain, consensus and data structure can be customized; business implementation is pre-processed off the chain, such as user A sends B a paragraph For video, only transaction is recorded on the business chain, and the main chain records the change of account balance (if any).
therefore,
therefore,In order to avoid the large amount of network data, the TOP Chain main chain adopts a double lattice data structure: Unit-Lattice (unit lattice) andBlock-Lattice (block lattice)。
Specifically, TOP Chain will create its own chain for each account to record the sending and receiving of transactions. Each asset transaction record of an account is called a unit. Every once in a while, TOP Chain will take a "snapshot" of the last unit of all accounts, and store the status data in the block and synchronize it to the whole network. Then, TOP Chain will delete data other than the last unit of each account to reduce congestion caused by excessive block capacity.
TOP Chain also usesDouble layer sharding technology. This is mainly because if there are too many shards, there will be a large number of cross-shard transactions, which will easily cause blockage of cross-shard routing. Therefore, TOP Chain has designed a two-level fragmentation: Zone and Shard. The whole system is divided into more than 10 zones, and each zone is dynamically divided into multiple shards, thereby improving routing efficiency through relatively centralized management. Shards are synchronized in units of blocks. Top Chain uses the block lattice to track the state synchronization between Zones.
Many DAG public chains have changed the consensus mechanism in order to simplify the system structure and improve the performance of the public chain, resulting in the public chain being too centralized. For example, IOTA, Byteball and Nano, they all adopt the role of coordinator more or less.
TOP Chain expansion also changed the consensus mechanism, but relatively more decentralized and secure. The TOP Chain consensus network is divided into three layers:
Edge access layer Edge Network. The nodes at the outermost layer of the network are edge nodes, which are directly connected to the client and are responsible for uploading and transporting transactions. In order to protect the routing nodes and consensus nodes, no transaction consensus is executed, and the complete ledger is not kept.
Transaction distribution and synchronization layer Routing Network. The routing node is responsible for routing transactions to the consensus layer for consensus; it is also responsible for managing shards and synchronizing account status between shards.
And the core transaction consensus layer Core Network. Core Network uses Shard as the smallest execution unit for consensus. The consensus node is randomly selected from the Core Node in the Zone by the PBFT algorithm, and each Shard consists of at least 21 consensus nodes and at least 9 backup nodes.
Developers on TOP Network need to purchase communication services provided by miners through TOP Marketplace. Marketplace is a decentralized market implemented with smart contracts: Miners quote to Marketplace, Dapps inquire about prices, and Marketplace automatically matches Dapps and service nodes according to algorithms (considering various factors such as price and service quality) to generate contracts.
TOP Network does not charge Gas fees for the transaction itself, except for large-value, high-frequency transactions, registration of Account Name, and deployment of smart contracts.
Steve said that this is to prevent TOP Network from being attacked by DDOS transaction floods due to the free gas fee for transactions. These fees charged by the network will also be destroyed to hedge against the additional tokens issued each year. The additional tokens are mainly used to reward some nodes that do not participate in mining, such as edge nodes and routing nodes, and they have no consensus mining benefits.
In addition to technology, Steve said that their advantage is that they have a large number of existing users.It is worth noting that,
It is worth noting that,Decentralized communication infrastructure does not equal decentralized communication services. TOP Network is distributed, but the applications that choose its services do not have to be decentralized, which depends on the developer's own wishes.
As for the team, the founder, Steve, was one of the earliest employees of WebEx, the world's largest online conferencing service provider. He once created the video conferencing software Shengwei, which was acquired by Huawei in 2010. CMO Noah, previously worked in management positions at finance and insurance group Starr, ICBC and PwC.
(I am the author Huang Xuejiao. You can add WeChat hxjiapg for blockchain project reporting/communication. Please note your position and reason)
(I am the author Huang Xuejiao. You can add WeChat hxjiapg for blockchain project reporting/communication. Please note your position and reason)
