Tucson Blockchain Developers Meetup Task — Crosschain Applications; AKA Parachains

Tucson Blockchain
Sep 5, 2018 · 4 min read

At the last Tucson Blockchain Developers Meetup, I was tasked with doing some research on crosschain applications, otherwise known as parachains. I made mention as I am following along with Polkadot Network and the fact that it is getting into cross chain applications and establishing international law across blockchains, an intriguing fact given that Polkadot isn’t set to go “live” until Q3 or Q4 of 2019.

So I follow along with the Polkadot Beginners Lounge https://riot.im/app/#/room/#polkadotbeginners:matrix.org and it was brought to my attention some recent developments, although basic at this time.

Robert Habermeier had posted some tweets about these developments:

It may be added that edwardt — from the Polkadot Beginners Lounge and Polkadot Watercooler, a go to place for all things Polkadot, mentioned: “There are some subtleties here that maybe haven’t been explained so well in our literature.

Someone who downloads the Polkadot core software has the option of running a validator node or a collator node. I think you could see it as different modes of operation of the same piece of software. (I doubt one particular node will be both at the same time).

You could also just run a node to have a copy of all the data, like you would like Ethereum right now. You don’t necessarily have to be an active participant when you run a full node.

I suspect, but not completely sure at the moment, that the part of Polkadot core software will contain all the necessary logic to be a collator of any parachain.

So parachain developers need to provide the code that’s required to perform the collation duties of their parachain. Then the community would be free to decide if they want to be a collator on any given parachain. It would, of course, help if parachain developers ran dedicated nodes for the collation of blocks on their own chain.

There should be some availability guarantees for collation data, but not sure if the economics of reward / punishment have been decided upon for this.”

edwardt also pointed out some technical documentation found on GitHub:

Parachain Deployment and Querying

View Parachains

https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/storage > parachains > activeParachains()

Create Parachain

Obtain WebAssembly code for Basic Adder Example by rphmeier:

Download from https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot/blob/4af260fea194d807a48f63dbd4b4595d4be91744/polkadot/parachain/tests/res/adder.wasm (possibly outdated)

or look in the polkadot/parachain/tests/res/ folder on master.

Run the adder-collator binary with arguments to connect it to validators in the network, which also runs the relay chain. It will help if you have validators’ node IDs to connect to.

cargo run -p adder-collator -- ARGS_GO_HERE

Deploy Parachain

Start Referendum

Go to https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/extrinsics

Select Account to deploy it

Either:

democracy > propose(proposal, value) > democracy > startReferendum(proposal, voteThreshold) > parachains > registerParachain(id, code, headerData), drag-and-drop / upload the compiled WASM binary from Rob or Adrian to Parachain Code, enter headData, Super majority approval, balance/deposit: 100,000

OR

democracy > propose(proposal, value) > parachains > registerParachain(id, code, headerData), drag-and-drop / upload the compiled WASM binary from Rob or Adrian to Parachain Code, enter headData, …

Note: View Minimum Deposit that’s required at https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/storage > democracy > minimumDeposit() > click “+”

NOTE: Remember the REFERENDUM_ID

Wait unit REFERENDUM_ID is a Proposed Referendum (aka Proposed Referenda)

View Referendum Info / Count https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/storage > democracy > referendumInfoOf(referendum) > enter REFERENDUM_ID > click “+” (then just wait for it to appear) https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/storage > democracy > referendumCount() >click “+””

Vote on the REFERENDUM_ID in the Proposed Referenda (before it expires)

View Voting Period at https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/storage > democracy > votingPeriod() > click “+”

Wait unit REFERENDUM_ID is an Active Referendum (aka Launched Referenda on the Table of Referenda)

Vote on the REFERENDUM_ID in the Active Referenda (before it expires)

View Launch Period at https://poc-2.polkadot.io/#/storage > democracy > launchPeriod() > click “+” Alternatively view the list of “proposedReferenda” or “activeReferenda” with Polka-UI https://github.com/paritytech/polka-ui or http://polkadash.io/

Confirmation that Parachain Successfully Deployed

View Polkadot Node logs until it says Super majority approval Send transaction and query the Parachain Basic Adder (Test) Parachain is too simple for transactions to be executed against it, as it’s a minimal test parachain for adding a number. References:

Above summary has been built by @luke based on notes I’ve taken by following comments made by @rphmeier, @jaco, @adrianbrink in #polkadot-watercooler

You can read more about Parachains at https://github.com/w3f/Web3-wiki/wiki/Parachains

ARK.io https://ark.io/

Think Smart Bridging with Ark.io as it relates to cross chain applications. Here is a decent video by Boxmining I found on Youtube:

Ark | Interconnected Blockchain Ecosystem

RChain.coop

Another project that is going to be getting into cross chain applications is RChain.coop https://www.rchain.coop/

While this video doesn’t get into cross chain application per se, it does get into what is coming from RChain Cooperative:

Destry at Tucson Blockchain Developers Meetup has discussed “Atomic Swaps” and that has addressed cross chain exchanging and yet these applications will advance as time goes by. Trust will become a major factor in these networks and yet they are trustless in their current state. Time will tell what these developers are capable of; be it international law across blockchains by Polkadot Network or Smart Bridging by Ark.io or solving scalability issues across various cross chain applications or on their own RChain Network, we live in interesting times.

Tucson Blockchain

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Bringing work / life balance and pilot projects to Tucson and the Arizona Territory! Starting with a self sovereign identity and moving to cooperative.

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