Fluence is a peer-to-peer platform infrastructure, ready to revolutionize the way blockchain evolves. In this article, let’s discuss the concept behind Fluence, its potential and its growth aspects.
TLDR
* What is Fluence?
* Features of Fluence Network
* Aqua and Consensus
* Digital Economy and Peer-To-Peer
* Use Cases
Fluence is a community-driven and open-source blockchain ecosystem. It has a permissionless and decentralised infrastructure that helps to host peer-to-peer applications. You might be wondering, several platforms provide for application development, then why Fluence? Let me explain it in simple terms. Developers want their apps to be as secure and smooth as possible. Users want their data to be as safe and private as possible. The present-day web2 infrastructures are vulnerable to hacks. We all have heard how hackers stole user data from McDonalds in Korea and Taiwan. Well, Fluence could be the perfect solution for data privacy and safety. It hosts apps that can run independently of centralised institutions and cloud providers. Especially in a peer-to-peer dominated world, data security is often overlooked. But not for long. Fluence offers an integrated solution that can ensure app data never ends up in the hands of corporates.
Is that all? No! Fluence has a ton of unique features in its sleeves.
Fluence innovates the next generation of internet computing that is permissionless, scalable, and composable. Let’s take one bite at a time to understand these concepts.
Permissionless means a user does not require permission to interact with the network. It’s like an open supermarket, without any cashiers! But on the blockchain, no single user can misbehave and try and do fraud transactions. Permissionless also implies anyone can deploy applications using the extensive database of Fluence.
But what if you are a high-end developer with your apps having millions of users? Or whether you are a small scale developer with a few thousand users? Don’t worry Fluence has got you covered. Fluence offers high scalability so that each application can host billions of users. The most interesting fact here is the ability of these applications to create subnets on the Fluence network. These subnets act as arms of Fluence, without affecting speed and reliability. In technical terms, it is known as sharding.
Okay, now your apps are working smoothly, but being a vigilant developer, you are concerned about whether there is a verification mechanism in place. Most other blockchain projects would explain how the technology is most secure etc. But Fluence aims to be inclusive of all, both web3 and web2. That’s why Fluence provides you with the choice of selecting a specific validator who you trust. Let me put this straight. If you want to verify your application data, become a validator on Fluence. Yes, you as a developer get to enjoy complete autonomy.
Above all, Fluence provides a flexible consensus mechanism. Explaining the consensus mechanism is beyond the scope of this article. But Fluence assures the trustless consensus is as good as you think. It enables applications to opt for consensus for specific tasks. In a nutshell, Fluence supports various consensus mechanisms as Aqua libraries.
What is Aqua? Aqua is an open-source programming language fuelling fluence. Yes, it’s the heart and soul of Fluence, that helps to implement better coordination in consensus. Aqua is useful in implementing trusted consensus algorithms like Raft, and trustless ones like Tendermint. That’s not it. Aqua allows for creating and sustaining peer-to-peer environments. It is much required, as peer-to-peer(p2p) transactions must be kept separate from p2p computations. Also, it forms the basis of an open, decentralized application marketplace. Aqua is also Turing-complete, based on process-calculus, and allows to implement custom algorithms for any network topology.
Relevance of Fluence Network in the Modern Era
Internet envisioned to bring equality to all. Yet, there is a generic digital divide in place, and multinational conglomerates own user’s data. These companies sell user data to others, making more profit. Take the example of google and amazon. They dominate the current data infrastructure niche. Eventually, it leads to data totalitarianism. The concentration of private data in a non-private environment is a threat to data management in general. How? Imagine a day when Google or Amazon fails. A system that has a single point of failure is a big risk, especially in a world that considers data as the new gold.
The present world is fast becoming digital-oriented. More people use the internet each day, creating a large amount of data. This phenomenon is like to increase in the future. At a point, the existing system will fail terribly, leaving user data vulnerable. This tipping point is not exactly far away. Hence decentralisation is the best practical solution and way forward. This is the opportunity for the peer-to-peer market model to dethrone business-business or business-client models. Logically speaking, Fluence has a better chance to lead this wave of decentralisation. It provides flexibility, accessibility and usability in addition to security to applications.
Adobe’s Digital Economy Index underlines this. In the last seven years, the digital purchasing power of the United States has increased by 23%. More people are choosing to live online. It further accelerates the need for decentralised data management efforts. P2P allows applications to connect users and keep sensitive, private data under their control. Essentially, users own their data in a true sense. Fluence can facilitate this upcoming P2P revolution with the right tools.
Some Use Cases
As Fluence is a cloud computer, it has a wide variety of applications, from messaging to the internet of things. It can host web apps and other communication platforms.
Fluence can build censorship-resistant applications that can run on users’ devices. These apps can be social networks or streaming protocols. In an ever-growing creator economy, Fluence can become the beacon of hope, for those from countries with high censorship norms. Fluence also removes the necessity of a central authority to manage the applications. It helps DAOs to establish and run sustainably. If DAOs are healthy, communities will become the biggest force displaying the essence of decentralisation.
Comparison of Aqua and Traditional Languages
First and foremost, programmes written on Aqua are not executed fully at deployed devices. Firstly, the code is processed into particles. Then, particles travel over the network to trigger functions on remote peers. Sounds complicated? Not really. Consider particles as a bag of candies and each peer as a kid. Now you take the candy bag and go to each kid. The kid will demand a specific candy, and you can comfortably deliver the candy from the candy bag. Each peer has a different set of requests and requirements. The programme chooses the function and activates the request. Simple, right?
Let’s also go through the WebAssembly runtime in Fluence, called Marine.
Marine executes computations triggered by Aqua programs. Marine provides a secure code sandbox also. It ensures that hosted code can only access the system with explicit permission. These services are very lightweight and fast that it effectively becomes a distributed serverless engine. Marine and Aqua together standardize open source components for data processing.
Well, it's a wrap. To know more about Fluence, visit their website https://fluence.network/.
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Fluence is also active in Telegram. To join the vibrant community, go to https://t.me/fluence_project.
