In this article we are going to explain some concepts about Fluence, Its Importance in Off-chain compute in the web 3 ecosystem, what role does Fluence play in terms of empowering the web 3 ecosystem then compare it to other related protocols. But before we get to that, we need to explore what Fluence is.
What is Fluence
Started in 2017, Fluence is an open application platform. Before diving deeper, let us explain what an Open Application is. You might have heard of Open Source, (Software in which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed. Think of Android, yes, the very same Android we use on our mobile phones, it is an Open Source, that anyone can access, change and redistribute.
People who use Open source can collaborate and develop without leadership, this promotes innovation and makes things faster and easier. This has led to open source growing faster and becoming flexible as time progresses.
So, what is Fluence
Just like Open source, Fluence before anything else is an open application. An Open Application needs tools to function. These tools help create a thriving environment that enables a developer to develop faster and simpler. Think of how Android has Android Studio that can be used to develop mobile apps. There are three tools needed by Fluence to make all this possible.
Three tools for Fluence
Distributed Protocol
When we talk about a Distributed System, we are talking about a system where work is distributed among multiple components for the purpose of solving a problem. Think of a Team of workers, they come together to solve a particular issue, although they are sitting at different desks or cubicles, they still talk to each other and they appear as a single unit. Another Example will be Gamers in Multiplayer game. they are all in different areas but they are playing in the same game. If one turns off their device and stops communicating, Others will still play the game and communicate with each other.
Having said that, Fluence Uses a Distributed Computing Protocol for the following reasons, although there are quite a few, we will focus on two, in order to keep things clear and straightforward. But the image below should provide an overview.
Data Sharing
Data can be shared easily and if there is a collaboration, this will make it very easy to share data and collaborate on ideas.
Reliability
When you create an application, you need to trust the fact that your application will not somehow lock you out or that Data will be turned off. You need to know that you can access your data wherever you are. We will dive deeper into this when we talk about Off-chain and Web 3.
Aquamarine
The second thing is you need a scripting language that makes it is easy to build. Remember we talked about how Open-Source developers were able to develop faster and simpler? Fluence has the same system. Through Aquamarine, the creation of applications is easier, faster. Aquamarine Is a new generation programming language that makes the design and development process easier.
Why Aqua
It allows developers to create and compose low-level distributed resources into decentralized applications with a touch of a high-level ergonomic language.
We mentioned the first tool as a Distributed protocol and how it works is distributed in order to solve a problem, remember our example on how a Team of people comes together to work on a problem as a collective? The Fluence network of nodes works a collective computer, that provides on-demand resources, The Fluence Peer to Peer computing network can service all developers around the world. All this is done by an Aqua program and its flexibility allows it to be customizable by every application. It can be used with browsers and various thin clients or edge devices.
How does it work?
Marine — A general-purpose web assembly runtime, built on wasma, which is available on each network peer.
BlockChain Based
Finally in order for Fluence to create a thriving environment, the needs to be a layer of safe monetization to encourage developers. This layer helps track the usage of apps
Off-chain compute and its Importance in Web 3
To understand the importance of Off-chain compute in Web 3. Do we first need to ask basic questions, such as What is off-chain? Off-chain is a transaction that can happen outside of the blockchain on behalf of smart contracts, these transactions are done by what we call Oracles. Oracles are software that act as a bridge between real-world data and smart contracts. We won’t focus march on the technical side of these terms, we just need to give you a basic understanding so you can understand what Fluence is all about.
Off-chain compute offers solutions that are otherwise not available in a traditional space its security and flexibility work outside of the blockchain application and still remain secure making it very important for the growth of Web 3.
You can create useful components that other people will use as part of their applications, they expose their applications to their audience and somewhere down the line other people will come and create their own applications and expose them to their audience. Think of Linux, how it started, through Linux we have other Linux versions, such as Ubuntu or Kali, but at the same time the original did not lose audience instead it gained and other people are still using it. This is was what creates a growing ecosystem, those that come after using what is present to create something new and add their own features exposing their applications to new users, the creator of the original application will also gain an audience, so there is no, “You stole my clients” everyone goes using this system, it belongs to the community and developers, it is not owned by anyone and all monetized transactions are done by clients, no middle man. This is what Web 3 is about, letting creators take control of their content. The image below is a rough example of what we just talked about.
So now that you know what off-chain is and what oracles are. Why is Off-chain so important to Web 3 ecosystem?
· Off-chain offers more lucrative opportunities, it is faster more flexible to use, less costly, and has more privacy. Off-chain can store any type of real sensitive data. Off-chain adds more value and advantages because it is not limited by speed for transections as you would find to be the case with On-chain transactions. This simply means on-chain needs to be confirmed by all nodes on the chain before the transaction is said to complete, and this becomes time-consuming. With the off-chain transaction, there is no need to wait before the transaction can be complete.
Fluence’s role in empowering his ecosystem
Fluence uses blockchain to create a decentralized data organization. Fluence strives to ensure that data privacy and ownership won’t fall in the hands of just a few organizations, such as you would find with cloud storage or social networks.
This is where the power of Web 3 comes in.
In a normal database, Information is controlled by a single organization and stored in a particular server. This makes data easier to get hacked. A perfect example will be the ransomware attacks that have increased.
Web 3
In a Decentralized network, data is spread across many independent nodes. So, because data is not kept Ina in a single place, there is no place you can single out and attack. All data is distributed across the network, and to top things up, if a hacker comes along, they wouldn’t know which node has the information and it also it is encrypted.
In this system, there is no fear of Censorship by the government or the fear of your application locking you out because the government has cut off your access.
At the start of this article, we mentioned how Fluence wants developers to develop faster, and easier just like they would with Open-Source Software. So now it is clear to see that Developers can code their decentralized database network. All nodes on this network are connected and kept functioning by the Fluence protocol.
Fluence Vs related protocols
As you can see from the image below, external data sources or API can be used in the application on Fluence. This allows apps to enable dynamic updates and computation for data they keep in decentralized content-addressable storage (CAS)
CAS System storage scales across many machines, and also supports highly selective queries to reduce the costs associated with unwanted data access. IPFS (Inter-Planetary File System is one of the systems capable of disseminating datasets
Fluence supports IPFS, this makes it possible to expose virtually any IPFS API to Aqua. It also supports other solutions out of the network such REST APIs, via p2p adapters services.
Most developers who have experience with blockchains did so by interacting through JSON RPC (remote procedure call protocol encoded in JSON) or REST endpoint (services a set of REST resources) With Fluence you will find this not to be the case because Fluence is a general-purpose environment) as a developer you create those services. This is where Aqua comes into play.
The Power of Aqua
This is where fluence is set apart and shines. Everything happens on a network, meaning it reduces the client requirements. A lot of people do not run these services on big laptops or desktops, they use edge devices and or other devices such as thin clients. They will benefit from this because the majority of the workload is redistributed to the network.
With Aqua you can compose services into applications. You can compose outside networks and outside applications
Why do this?
· The power of Web 3 comes to play here, you stay in control of your data at all times.
· No brokers, meaning you will not be dealing with various centralized cloud environments
· You will become censorship resistant (it does not make it censorship proof)
The Particle
· Particles are conflict-free replication data structures; they combine data and the execution.
· The execution is the compiled aqua into AIR (Low-level machine-readable language output)
In conclusion
What makes Fluence different and so important to Web 3 is that it can host and fully manage applications without a central admin. Its community members can run its nodes with the application backend.
