Decode BSN Products
An Introduction to Public BSN and Private BSN
- What is BSN?
The two core issues holding back the mass adoption of blockchain technology today are cost and interoperability. The technology is still too expensive for individual developers to build, deploy, and manage decentralized applications. For example, an application built on the well-known permissioned chain Hyperledger Fabric using three peer nodes would cost a developer close to US$20,000 if they were to build it by themselves. However, with the Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN), which provides a shared environment for developers to work within, a similar application would only cost around US$500 per year. This is a dramatic cost-saving and removes a significant barrier to entry for an individual developer.
There are literally hundreds of different permissioned and permissionless chains in existence today; however, enabling them to exchange information and be interoperable with each other remains a major challenge. By integrating different blockchain technologies within the BSN system and building interchain services, the BSN is working to create true interoperability between the different chains.
The history of the evolution of the internet can give us some insights as to why blockchain infrastructure projects like BSN are crucial for today’s blockchain world. In the late 80s and early 90s, many organizations, including governments, universities, and businesses, started building intranet systems, and these intranets were typically built with different technologies and protocols. It was only when people gradually started to realize the power of the internet and more and more people began to connect to the internet that common standards became essential. Slowly, the TCP/IP and HTTP protocols became the standard technical ‘language’ of the internet as we know it today.
Just as was the case in the 90s, it was only when the cost of accessing the internet and building websites fell dramatically and common standards emerged to enable interoperability, that the internet entered the mass adoption phase. So, just like the internet two decades ago, the BSN’s objective today is to make blockchain technology much more accessible and affordable; in this way, we can truly unleash the power of innovation. In a way one could think of the BSN as “the internet of blockchains”.
The blockchain industry is evolving along similar lines today. Today in the public or permissioned space, every participant uses their own technology, which raises an important question: which technology or technologies within the blockchain space will survive and which will eventually be discarded?
The BSN can be thought of as a way to ‘hedge’ against the risk that one chain or platform which an organization has invested resources in becomes obsolete further down the line. This is because the BSN places such a high emphasis on achieving systematic interoperability, and therefore provides a space where different blockchain technologies can interact and exchange data with each other.
To build a blockchain application, you need professional training and learning, but which system should one learn? The BSN infrastructure aims to be the best place where developers can learn and experiment with dozens of different chains and interchain services.
2. What does it mean to say the BSN is an infrastructure?
The BSN is an infrastructure in the sense that it provides the space, tools and resource where users can achieve their specific development goals. In this sense it can be thought of as similar to a power grid or water supply facility that provides utilities to every household independent of how the end-user choses to use the resources. These end-users don’t need to build their own personal grid or water wells, and they pay based on their usage. BSN subscribers therefore don’t need to build the ‘blockchain grid’ and are free to decide how to use the system to solve their organization’s particular goals. Basic economics explains through the concept of economies of scale why this approach to essential infrastructure is both more efficient and can allow costs to be much lower for end-users.
3. How to do it? — BSN technical architecture explained
The BSN has three distinct layers: cloud computing resources, public city nodes, and portals. The schematic below shows a high-level overview of the system; more details are available upon request.
When a developer deploys a DApp, they need cloud computing resources to build the application. Therefore, to provide flexibility to developers around the world, the BSN has integrated all major global cloud providers, notably Google, AWS, Microsoft, and, inside China, China Mobile, China Telecom, and Ali Cloud. The BSN has connected all these cloud providers together, so that when developers deploy an application, they can choose whichever cloud provider they prefer or can use multiple cloud providers at the same time.
The second layer is virtual data centers, known as public city nodes (PCN), deployed on all the cloud platforms. Within all PCNs, blockchain frameworks, interchain services, CA services, operating environments, key management, development SDK, gateway API, and many other blockchain technologies are integrated.
The third layer is the portals where developers and customers can interface and access BSN services. The BSN does not serve end-users directly, instead it provides back-end technology and core APIs to enable tech companies to build and operate their own portals. The portal operator takes care of all the front-end operations and user interfaces. All the portals manage their own users and do not share user information with the BSN. These three layers together encompass all the BSN technologies and innovations which BSN have brought to the marketplace. Through the portals the BSN provides developers with a ‘one-stop-shop’ solution where they can try all available technologies within a single environment in an easy and cost-effective way.
4. Why does BSN choose partners to operate portals?
It is almost impossible to build one website to serve all purposes and all users worldwide, especially taking into consideration different languages, regulatory frameworks, and industry needs. Therefore, we empower our partners to build portals to support diverse applications for different business sectors and in various languages across the globe.
Blockchain is a fundamental technology, and it is still too early to fully comprehend what types of applications may be built on it. This means that many different tools with specific functions for specific regions will emerge, and BSN cannot design a front-end interface to achieve all these aims simultaneously.
The BSN portal (www.bsnbase.io) is a prototype and an example showing what a standard portal looks like. BSN welcomes people to innovate on top of the BSN Empowerment Platform to create new businesses and offer new services based on or alongside BSN resources.
Within three years the BSN software will be open sourced, and then everybody can try to build a website or portal for themselves.
5. Who are potential portal operators?
A number of different organizations, both from private and public sectors, could potentially have uses for BSN portals. The list below is not meant to be exhaustive, but to give a sense of the myriad different uses of the BSN system.
Small and medium-sized cloud service providers. Small and medium-sized cloud service providers are likely to offer Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) in the future. They may choose to build a BaaS from scratch or to utilize the BSN, which is much cheaper and also more powerful.
BSN tools have already helped one mid-sized local cloud service provider in Wuhan city to achieve an 80% reduction in the cost of portal development, while also shortening the development time to build a BaaS platform inside their cloud service portal from 8 to 2 months.
Vertical solution providers. For example, a vertical solution provider who focuses on smart city applications and operates a marketplace for smart city applications would be able to embed a BSN portal within that vertical marketplace.
SaaS providers. SaaS providers like Salesforce could launch a service allowing their clients to use blockchain technology to connect all stakeholders to exchange secure data. To achieve this, Salesforce would need to build one blockchain for all the participating companies to transmit data. Salesforce would need to embed BaaS services into their website, and this would allow their customers to set up personalized parameters and configurations with just a few clicks. Salesforce could either build that on their own, or they could take the simpler route by just spending a few months connecting to BSN.
Universities. The BSN could offer blockchain resources affordable enough to allow students to use and build their own blockchain applications. Universities could also become portal operators to provide BaaS to their students to learn and experiment with all kinds of blockchain technologies in a single environment.
In this way, it is easy to see how BSN can become a fundamental infrastructure for people to build on and gain familiarity with blockchain technology very quickly. The fact that customers can even choose their own cloud and therefore can build everything within their own environment is an additional bonus.
6. What is Private BSN?
The technical architecture of Private BSN is just like that of the public BSN, but is more appropriate for large organizations such as governments, corporations, and banks that typically have their own intranets/internal networks with different sets of security requirements. Within an intranet, there can be hundreds or even thousands of overlapping and interlinking IT systems, and this scale of complexity can create problems. Three problems specifically arise for intranets making use of blockchain technology:
1) Blockchain technology uses a lot of resources. This means that if the system is not well managed, there will potentially be large-scale inefficiency and wasted resources.
2) Secondly, while blockchain technology is very secure, a system administrator needs to manage all accesses and all keys to ensure that the system is secure. One application would typically have its own unique set of keys. Therefore, traditionally when you build ten applications, this will lead to ten blockchain environments, ten sets of keys, and ten management systems, which could quickly become unmanageable as the number of applications increases.
3) A lack of a standard development toolbox may lead to repetitive development work within the organization. Providing development tools such as SDKs to developers is also necessary from the management perspective to ensure that developers don’t replicate the same development work needlessly.
For standard Private BSN, there are three different portals: one for developers, one for maintenance, and one for admin/management. Customers can also customize their own portal, and BSN will provide all APIs needed to do so. Just as how web-based applications are managed today, we also need account management, access management, security management, resources management, and user management for blockchain applications. In Private BSN, from a single dashboard the system administrator can monitor and have permission-control over all deployed blockchain applications and has the flexibility to open or close the ports to different groups within the intranet to control access.
Instead of having a separate environment for each application, in Private BSN, literally thousands of projects can be run simultaneously and in a fluid manner, and dozens of frameworks can be employed.
Private BSN can also be deployed in a hybrid environment, with some portion of the applications and network running on premise behind the corporate firewall. Meanwhile other applications can be linked to public cloud resources because the previously mentioned first layer of BSN architecture allows cross-cloud deployment.
To alleviate privacy and security concerns while installing Private BSN for clients such as banks, it is important that BSN staff do not need to be directly involved in this installation process. The Private BSN installation package can be delivered with detailed step-by-step instructions, and the BSN technical support staff are available on stand-by to provide targeted assistance if required. Notably, open-source software licenses can also be provided allowing clients to inspect the code if they wish.
Essentially, as long as there is enough capacity available, clients can build as many applications as they need. There is no limit placed on how many applications can be deployed on Private BSN, and it is possible to simply add more virtual machines into the Private BSN if needed to run more applications simultaneously.
7. The two modes of Private BSN
Private BSN for the production environment. Here users can design and run applications in production, and all applications can be managed and monitored within the Private BSN.
Private BSN in a development environment. The so-called ‘development sandbox’ is the perfect innovation and training tool for developers. Big corporations have their own IT teams and in-house developers to develop blockchain applications, which means that this team manages all the keys, APIs, SDKs, as well as developing and testing applications. Private BSN in the sandbox environment can become the most potent interim testing environment and training hub that allows a later seamless transition to the production environment.
For many smaller or medium-sized companies, developers often only have one or two frameworks to choose from. If they were to engage in many projects based on different technologies simultaneously, this would strain their IT department’s capabilities and leave limited spare capacity available. With Private BSN, in-house developers can choose from dozens of underlying technologies to build their applications for different projects, and then manage and test everything and get applications ready to be deployed in the production environment. As such, they no longer need to build an environment solely for testing purposes.
In brief, Private BSN can be both an innovation environment as well as a very good training tool for in-house developers to get familiar with all kinds of blockchain frameworks. This diversity of underlying technologies is essential today because of the number of different blockchain frameworks out there and the pace at which they are evolving.
8. Efficiency gains of Private BSN
What are the estimated cost savings of the Private BSN approach to blockchain application development and operation?
First and foremost, it is important to say that Private BSN is not appropriate for all business scenarios. For example, if someone wanted to build only one blockchain application then Private BSN would be overkill. However, for companies working on multiple applications Private BSN could be hugely beneficial.
Fewer computing resources are needed. As already stated, Private BSN provides one unified environment for all applications, and this means organizations don’t need as many peers or virtual machines to run their applications as would be the case in a traditional ‘one application-one environment’ scenario.
Traditionally, if one application is deployed on five peers, and each peer requires one virtual machine, this would result in twenty-five virtual machines. However, Private BSN has the capability to allow five applications to share five peers, which means only five virtual machines would be required for this hypothetical network. This represents is a huge cost saving and allows available resources to be used in the most efficient manner.
Fewer staff are required. As well as creating savings by requiring fewer computing resources, Private BSN can also reduce costs by decreasing the number of software engineers needed for a given project. To manage ten different environments, and especially if these ten projects are undergoing a very intensive pace of development, at least two or three software engineers focusing exclusively on the environment and simply ensuring everything is functioning correctly would normally be needed. On Private BSN, fewer engineering resources are required to manage and maintain the system, allowing internal IT departments to get more accomplished with the same staffing levels.
Simplified key management. Blockchain applications can be very complex because of the need to create all the keys. Without the use of Private BSN, the issue would arise of where and how to store the keys to all separate applications. If each developer is left to generate their own keys and store somewhere by themselves, the result will be overly complex, and security could easily become a major problem. In Private BSN, all keys can be managed in a simple and secure manner. The IT admin team can deactivate any key they want, and as such can effectively shut-down some connections to the network if required.
Streamlined management and monitoring of development. In the worst-case scenario, a developer might mistakenly code a bug into the system and crash the applications. To avoid this, either the whole environment must be actively monitored by a large group of staff, or it would be necessary to build very expensive tools to monitor everything automatically. With Private BSN, everything can be monitored by one system administrator who is alerted to issues in real-time through the user-friendly dashboard where they can see all data flows and system status.
Allowing staff to perform at their optimal level. Finally, it is well known that today there is a serious shortage of experienced blockchain professionals. Partly this is due to the pattern whereby promising young graduates with the right skill sets are hired, trained, and then leave to pursue other projects elsewhere. It can be extremely difficult to find blockchain developers that are capable to manage blockchain applications as well as more standard development work, or IT managers who understand how to set-up and maintain blockchain environments.
The BSN system allows for an effective distinction to be made between the work of IT managers and software developers. For established IT managers, it can be very challenging for them to learn how to install blockchain frameworks and manage blockchain environments, and so these tasks typically fall to the developers. Many blockchain developers today have had to learn by themselves how to set-up the environment before working on the applications themselves.
The Private BSN installation package greatly simplifies the preparation and management work for IT managers, while also allowing developers to focus on the real-world business scenarios and development work without worrying about the overall environment.
User-friendly technology designed with developers in mind. Within the Private BSN package, the APIs are simple, intuitive, and easy to pick-up from scratch. Even new developers without previous experience can learn to develop blockchain applications in a matter of days due to the modular nature of the built-in tools
9. Private BSN Use-Case
In China, both the production and sandbox versions are running in real-world client environments. For banks in general, anything related to blockchain production is very strictly controlled, but the development sandbox environment is proving to be very popular with financial firms as it allows the rapid development and testing of new applications. For some potential customers who may want to add frameworks beyond the ones currently provided, BSN can also integrate these at the client’s request.
Another major client for BSN is the Chinese government, to whom BSN is providing training courses for developers who are working with the government on how to make best use of Private BSN in a sandbox environment. Within the sandbox, the development process can be monitored easily. With just one session of about two hours, a skilled developer can start to experiment and discover what they can build. BSN provide twenty hours of free training sessions for Private BSN customers, and can arrange more if requested.
10. Pricing
Pricing for Private BSN is based on a monthly subscription model. It is currently $200 per month per virtual machine (the number of virtual machines within the Private BSN), a minimum of 30 VMs is generally recommended, although typical deployments have required 50 to 100 VMs. For a standard Private BSN which supports around three to five permissioned frameworks and two public chains, this would therefore equate to roughly fifty virtual machines costing about $10,000 per month. The base pricing includes all permissioned and permissionless frameworks on the BSN and one interchain service. Additional services such as IDE services, testnet services, and IPFS private network services are also available for an additional monthly charge.
