How Gas Fees Are The Next Evolution Of The Pay Per Transaction Compute Model
Cloud computing has gone through a lot since it first got introduced, and it keeps evolving more every day. In this article, we’ll introduce the journey of computation as such went through during the years, where it stands today, and what’s ahead for this ever-changing sector with next-generation blockchain scaling, the technology that revolutionizes the pay-per-transaction model and reduces gas fees, the payment units of traditional blockchains.
The History Of Traditional Compute Models
First off, let’s have a word about what the sector’s history looked like to date. Back when computing was in its infancy, the only viable option users had was to simply own everything needed for a server, including hardware, software, expertise, and everything else needed for computation. This posed a high level of entry that most individuals simply could not afford.
With time, however, things started to shift drastically, and the first cloud-based computation models appeared. This somewhat lifted the barrier of entry by allowing users to benefit from the system without owning everything. Still, there was room for improvement, which servers like AWS Lambda seemingly solved; however, the underlying flaws of such systems surfaced fast.
The Flaws Of Current Models
The main issue with current models does not necessarily lie in their performance or features, but rather their nature. Most systems like AWS Lambda are fully centralized which means there is one entity, organization, or person in control when it comes to important decisions and profits. As there was no other known solution for quite a long time, these flaws stayed hidden or were ignored outright. However, with the advent of blockchain technology, things were about to change massively.
The World Computer And Blockchain Technology’s Revolution
The idea of completely shared and user-controlled computing started with visions of a world computer that would match the performance of old models but eliminate their greatest flaw, that is, centralized influence and profit orientation.
How does a fully decentralized system perform compute?
A contract — is the core of the distributed compute model, you can find more information in this geeksforgeeks article.
Architecture —
“ Unlike Web 2.0 applications like Medium, Web 3.0 eliminates the middle man. There’s no centralized database that stores the application state, and there’s no centralized web server where the backend logic resides.
Instead, you can leverage blockchain to build apps on a decentralized state machine that’s maintained by anonymous nodes on the internet.”
The above snippet is from The Architecture of a Web 3.0 application article which is one of the best blogs I have read that explains how a web 2.0 application architecture can be represented in web 3.0 synonyms.
But there are questions the distributed compute community needs to answer before this solution can even be discussed as a viable alternative.
Cost volatility problem — This problem generally occurs as the number of people using the system increases the more each person has to pay to use the system.
An example is the Bored Ape Yacht Club Otherside NFT collection launch, where the NFT auction caused the gas price on Ethereum to skyrocket and literally rendered it unusable, thus also know as the Scale problem.
The security problem — Since smart contracts are deployed on a decentralized system and publicly readable and addressable by a unique address over the internet it raises the following concerns
- How feasible is it for the fintech projects?
- Is it more suited for open source?
Blockchain technology, specifically Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) eventually proved to be the solution that has the most potential of achieving the above vision. EVM ticked all the boxes, that is, performance, utility, low barrier of entry, cloud-based system, and, above all, full decentralization. Despite all that, there was one major aspect between EVM and actual mass adoption: the ever increasing and notoriously high transaction costs called gas fees.
The Future: Blockchain Scaling To The Rescue
This is the point when we arrive at the present and when we take a look at the future of blockchain technology that lies in scaling the systems that work. Ethereum’s gas fee limitations are vital to mitigate, thus next-generation projects, like Polygon and Bitgert, are trying their hardest to solve the issue — successfully. With Layer-2 scaling, transaction grouping, and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) or other consensus mechanism adjustments, these innovative systems manage to lower gas fees to unbelievably small amounts which finally seem to unlock the full potential of such decentralized networks.
It’s impossible to predict what the future brings from this point, but one thing seems certain: blockchain-based computing is close to its pinnacle, and is ready to be put to the test by masses across the world.
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