What is the First principle thinking?
First principle thinking refers to the approach of returning to the most fundamental conditions of a concept, breaking it down into its constituent components for analysis in order to discover the most optimal path to achieve a goal. This principle originates from ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and gained widespread recognition due to Elon Musk’s endorsement. This principle is also similar to the “Tao” in Eastern philosophy.
In his 2014 commencement address at the USC Marshall School of Business, Elon Musk discussed his approach to decision-making based on First principle
“It might be familiar to you that the approach is to think about problems from a physics perspective, the first principle being to avoid analogy. You break things down to their most fundamental components that you can visualize, and then reason from there. It’s a good way to determine if something makes sense. This mindset isn’t easy — it’s energetically demanding. But if you aim for innovation in knowledge, this is the most effective thinking method. Physicists developed this framework, leading them to discover counterintuitive concepts such as quantum mechanics. So it’s a powerful, highly effective approach. Regardless, strive to do this as much as possible.”
Elon Musk, using the Pneumatic Tubes as an example, if one were to design a new train product with comparative or experiential thinking, most people would consider enhancing existing capabilities, such as more powerful propulsion and better aerodynamics. However, if using first principles to analyze product requirements, one should return to the fundamental purpose of a transportation tool: to transport a large amount of cargo from point A to point B. This is the original goal of creating trains and other transport vehicles, and upgrading them doesn’t necessarily require a locomotive. With first principles guiding the way, Musk suggests utilizing magnetic levitation and low vacuum for the Pneumatic Tubes.
First Principles thinking in Blockchain
What is the first principle thinking of blockchain?
Dr. Xiao Feng stated in his closing speech at the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Festival that the first principle of blockchain is a new method of accounting
“Blockchain, which emerged in 2009 as a distributed ledger, records digital value and network value, no longer on private ledgers but on a global, public, and transparent ledger where everyone contributes and all stakeholders record on the same book. This is the founding principle of blockchain: a “global public ledger” that is open and transparent, and all Web3 innovations are based on this principle.”
I concur with Dr. Xiao Feng’s viewpoint and expand on the essence of blockchain based on that.
When disassembled, the term “blockchain” consists of blocks and chain. Given that the first principle of blockchain is an accounting method, are block and chain truly essential?
Before addressing the question, let’s first understand why Bitcoin, as a distributed ledger, requires blocks and chain.
In Bitcoin, a block is a digital record containing a series of transaction information, akin to a page in a ledger. A hash value can be calculated using a hash function. The characteristic of this hash value is that as long as the block If the content changes slightly, the hash value will become different. Each block incorporates the hash of the previous block, essentially serving as a chain where the first entry of the N+1 block is the hash derived from the N block, resulting in an unalterable chain structure.
In Bitcoin, the mechanism that maintains the synchronized ledger is the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm. When a transaction occurs on the Bitcoin network, it is temporarily stored in the mempool. Miners then select a group of transactions from the mempool to attempt to create a new block. To do this, miners search for a specific number within a random sequence, combine it with the block’s data, and generate a hash value that meets the network’s difficulty target. This process is called “mining,” and the miner who first calculates the valid hash wins the right to record the transactions, or “mines” a block. The difficulty target is a dynamic value adjusted approximately every two weeks (every 2016 blocks), ensuring that the average block time for Bitcoin remains around 10 minutes.
Blocks and chain are the foundational components of Bitcoin, and PoW is the consensus mechanism that enables its decentralized ledger functionality. At its core, however, a distributed ledger can achieve decentralization through alternate methods, such as single transaction consensus, and the structure can be non-linear like a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). Therefore, blocks and chains are not inherently necessary; rather, the term “blockchain” has become deeply ingrained, serving as a colloquial name for decentralized ledgers represented by Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, among others.
Bitcoin, after all, dates back to 2009, and as blockchain research continues to evolve, while most blockchains still adhere to the traditional “blocks+chain” paradigm, there are now some blockchain designs founded on first principles, which depart from the core decentralized accounting problem with unique data structures and consensus mechanisms. This article delves into Sui and Arweave AO as examples.
Sui: The Tao of Water
Sui is a Layer1 built upon first principles, with its core team originating from the disbanded Diem and Novi projects at Facebook (now Meta). The name Sui is drawn from the Japanese word for water, which also resonates in its brand identity.
Sui employs Sui Move to write its smart contracts, using an object-based data model where all transactions take objects as input and produce new or modified objects as output, enabling independent objects to process transactions in parallel.
In Sui Move, every smart contract is a module composed of functions and structs. Structs are instantiated within functions and can be passed to other modules via function calls. Runtime storage instances of structs are treated as objects, with three distinct types of objects in Sui: owner objects, shared objects, and immutable objects.
Sui does not have blocks, individually verifying transactions, and whether a transaction is ordered and validated by Sui depends on whether the objects in the transaction are shared or not.
In simple transactions that do not involve shared objects, Sui employs a lightweight algorithm inspired by FastPay’s design, leveraging Byzantine Consistent Broadcast (BCB) for transaction dissemination. Clients broadcast the transaction to all validators in Sui, gather voting based on validator stakes, generate a certificate, and then rebroadcast the certificate back to the validators. Once a validator receives the certificate, they can directly execute the transaction.
When transactions involving shared objects, known as complex transactions, occur, Sui employs the Narwhal & Bullshark consensus mechanism. Narwhal is a mempool module responsible for ensuring the availability of transactions. Operating in a round-based manner, each round consists of two steps: distributing transactions (syncing them with other nodes) and verifying them (collecting votes from other nodes). After multiple rounds, transactions form a DAG. Bullshark is a consensus module that handles the sorting of transactions within Narwhal’s DAG.
Sui leverages DAG for transaction propagation and consensus, resulting in lower transaction latency and reduced network overhead during communication. Additionally, to preserve the integrity and order of historical information, Sui sorts transactions in a separate process as checkpoints, which are linked linearly, providing a structure similar to that of traditional blockchains for storing and accessing historical data.
In reality, Sui’s data structure is fundamentally different from traditional blockchains, as transactions in Sui are grouped and considered final at checkpoints, whereas traditional blockchains group transactions that are not yet definitively finalized into blocks.
Arweave AO: The Tao of Sky
Water may take various forms, but it still has a tangible presence. Similarly, Sui retains the consensus mechanism from traditional blockchains, eventually organizing transaction data into the familiar blockchain structure of blocks and chain. In contrast, Arweave AO upends the traditional blockchain paradigm entirely, eschewing blocks, chain, and consensus. Metaphorically speaking, Arweave AO is more akin to the sky (in Japanese, Sora) than water in this regard.
AO is a distributed, decentralized and actor-oriented computing system, based on Arweave. Its first principle is not to build a decentralized ledger but rather a decentralized computing system, akin to the relationship between applications and an operating system.
The problem of a computing system can be divided into storage, computation, and communication, all of which have well-established decentralized solutions in Web2. The challenge lies in decentralization. One approach is to construct separate decentralized storage networks, decentralized computing networks, and decentralized communication networks, which is essentially the thinking behind the decentralized technology architecture that Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood proposed in 2014. In this architecture, Ethereum (smart contracts) handles the decentralized computation component, Swarm is responsible for decentralized storage, and Whisper deals with decentralized communication.
AO is also composed of three units
- Communication Unit: Responsible for message exchange, conveying information to the computational unit and coordinating to derive the output result
- Scheduler Unit: responsible for scheduling, message sorting, and uploading messages to Arweave
- Compute Unit: responsible for performing computations and uploading their results to Arweave.
A process on an AO is composed of a set of units, each of which can function as horizontally scalable subnets, executing numerous transactions simultaneously for high-performance computing. However, each unit is not a decentralized network in itself. In fact, true decentralization is present only in the underlying storage network, Arweave, within the AO’s architecture.
A process on the AO securely uploads its verifiable holographic data to Arweave, ensuring the ability to recover the process from the hologram, which effectively operates under a Storage-based Consensus Paradigm (SCP). This principle holds that as long as the stored information is immutable, any transaction on top of it is traceable, and regardless of where the application is computed, identical results will be obtained.
AO lacks a consensus mechanism, but by utilizing SCP, it separates the computational layer from the storage layer, making the storage layer permanently decentralized while keeping the computational layer in the traditional model. As a result, there are no limitations on scalability in computations on AO, enabling services based on blockchain ledgers with VMs like EVM, WASM, or Move, and even allowing the recreation of existing Web2 services as decentralized versions on AO.
Summary
First Principles involves considering the fundamental nature of things from a physics perspective, and designing from that core upwards. Although Sui and Arweave AO are blockchain designs derived from first principles, their essences are distinct, resulting in entirely different architectures.
Sui is essentially a decentralized ledger service, competing with high-performance Layer 1 platforms like Solana. Therefore, Sui is designed with an object-oriented data model centered around “faster ledger services,” incorporating dual consensus mechanisms and parallel transaction execution powered by state-based access, which enhance scalability, lower latency, and fees. This enables developers to rapidly and cost-effectively create applications based on Sui Move smart contracts.
Arweave AO is essentially a decentralized computing system, or a decentralized cloud service, the infrastructure for running ledger services. As a result, AO introduces SCP, which entails off-chain computing and on-chain storage, enabling connected and collaborative operation of massive parallel computers. The user experience closely resembles traditional cloud services, but it is backed by a decentralized computing system.
