The First BSN Open Permissioned Blockchain, Cosmos/IRISnet Tech-based WenChang Blockchain Launched

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IRISnet Blog

6 min readFeb 1, 2021

The first BSN Open Permissioned Blockchain, WenChang Chain, launched on February 1st, 2021. WenChang Chain is backed with Cosmos/IRISnet technology and developed by the core development team behind IRISnet and also one of the early Cosmos SDK contributors. WenChang Chain is aiming to provide a low-cost user-friendly open blockchain platform that allows developers to deploy and implement smart contracts based on a variety of virtual machine environments like EVM/WASM, provides iService with strong interchain capability, and supports the Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

The BSN Open Permissioned Blockchain (OPB) Initiative was announced in September 2020, to promote the orderly development of public chain technologies in China in a controlled and compliant manner. This will let blockchain technology play a greater role in empowering the real economy. Through the OPB’s infrastructure developers can focus on business logic while developing and deploying dApps in an easier and more cost-effective way.

Cosmos and IRISnet were selected for their unique features and frameworks within the first batch of public blockchains to join this BSN OPB Initiative, we are extremely proud to be able to announce that this profitable collaboration has resulted in the first integrated OPB on BSN, WenChang Chain. The core team behind the development of IRISnet and one of the early open-source contributors of the Cosmos Network project, is the team in charge of developing WenChang Chain. As the convention on BSN, every OPB will be named after a key Chinese city, WenChang Chain is named after the Wenchang city that is located in Hainan, a province of great relevance for the Chinese blockchain technology scene, and also because Wenchang city is located one of the national space centers: there couldn’t be a more appropriate name for developers to start exploring Cosmos. WenChang Chain aims to give strong support to BSN OPB Initiative with the cutting-edge interchain technologies, increasing the number of use-case implementations currently available and facilitating to achieve the core values of blockchains.

Built with the basis of IRITA, the consortium blockchain implementation of IRISnet, WenChang Chain refactors the advanced underlying technology of public chains including Cosmos Hub and IRISnet to become compliant with Chinese enterprise standards. Besides, it offers permissioned controls over node deployment and multi-level management on security. In this way, the mature Cosmos/Tendermint technology, which has been demonstrated by years of practice, can be effectively leveraged, and the compliant requirements can be met as well. WenChang Chain succeeds the 6 core features of IRITA, including privacy computing enabled data sharing, high-Performance Consensus, cutting edge interchain technology, iService and NFT tech enabled digital asset modeling and exchange. Meanwhile, thanks to the global city node infrastructure deployed by BSN, it’s possible for developers to focus exclusively on the implementation of the application layer business logic with a ready open blockchain to work with, which better meets the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises to develop and deploy dApps in a more cost-effective manner.

WenChang Chain not only has the 6 core features of IRITA, but also has extra features including:

1. Flexible selections: Multiple smart contracts environment

EVM virtual machine with Solidity language as its core can be fully supported by WenChang Chain to make the existing applications on Ethereum compatible; also, various smart contracts like CosmWasm are provided — — thanks to the remarkable open-source contribution from Ethermint and CosmWasm projects. As a result, it’s flexible and convenient for developers to select languages according to their business needs to easily develop and deploy different sorts of dApps.

2. On-chain /Off-chain/Cross-chain Interoperability: iService

Besides, WenChang Chain offers a development-friendly microservice infrastructure. It supports the full life cycle management including off-chain services definition, service provider registration, invocation, governance, and so on. iService can easily integrate off-chain traditional business systems and interconnect with other blockchain systems due to its robust interchain capability over Cosmos Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC). WenChang Chain can also communicate with BSN Interchain Service IRITA Hub natively through iService/IBC which has officially launched in October 2020.

3. Fast Development: SDK and IDE Support

WenChang Chain provides an integrated development environment (IDE) to support different types of smart contracts as previously reported. At the same time, SDK is also provided for the deployment of iService. Apart from this important initial support, the IRISnet team plans to further collaborate with BSN on the application portal for IRITA OPB WenChang Chain, bringing to developers, computing service providers, and also users a better user experience.

In addition to these deployed features, WenChang Chain has great scalability and potential:

Interchain Capability: Cosmos IBC simplified version and IRISnet iService protocol have been integrated to facilitate dApps to access, and achieve the invocation between smart contracts and off-chain data/computing.
Low Cost & Fast Go To Market: In the first year, WenChang Chain will provide free services to developers and users for use, and then dedicate to continually bringing the low-cost and high-efficient chain services afterwards by taking full advantage of BSN’s infrastructure resources. Also, WenChang Chain has a well-developed infrastructure to support the reconciliation and settlement of different types of fees such as network fees, service fees, etc. Leveraging the Chinese DECP support from BSN in planning, those features can totally meet the needs of realistic business applications to efficiently go to market.
Application Ecosystem: Ecosystem partners can conveniently complete the deployment of business applications on the WenChang Chain, making joint efforts to accelerate the flourish of the dApp ecosystem. For instance, Uptick, the NFT e-ticketing application from StarryMedia, has already planned to deploy on WenChang Chain soon and in fact will be the first dApp launched on BSN OPB. Applications of various types such as CA digital certificates, identity authentication, e-signature, and electronic invoices will be available too on WenChang Chain to enrich the entire application ecosystem.

About BSN

BSN is a cross-cloud, cross-portal, cross-framework blockchain-based infrastructure network, which integrates cloud resources, underlying frameworks, operating environments, certificate management, development SDK and gateway API together to provide developers one-stop-shop to deploy and manage all kinds of Dapps conveniently and at low cost. Red Date Tech oversees the R&D and daily operation and maintenance of the BSN. To learn more about BSN visit Chinese Website and English Website.

About Cosmos Network

The Cosmos Network is a decentralized network of independent, scalable, and interoperable blockchains, creating the foundation for a new token economy. The Cosmos Hub is the first hub among many hubs that will launch within the Cosmos Network of sovereign blockchains.

Before the Cosmos Network, blockchains were siloed and unable to communicate with each other. They were hard to build and could only handle a small number of transactions per second. Cosmos solves these problems with a vision to build the “Internet of Blockchains.”

The Cosmos SDK is a developer-friendly, modular framework, powered by a Byzantine Fault-Tolerant (BFT) consensus algorithm such as Tendermint Core, allowing developers to fully customize their decentralized applications and focus on business logic.

About IRISnet

IRISnet (a.k.a IRIS Hub) is an Interchain Service Hub designed to support the next generation of distributed applications. Built with Cosmos-SDK, IRIS Hub enables cross-chain interoperability through a unified service model, which supports not only token interchain transfer but also trustworthy data consumption and computation invocation across heterogeneous systems (public blockchains, consortium blockchains and legacy systems). IRIS Hub also provides a variety of modules, such as Coin Swap, HTLC, and random numbers, to support DeFi applications. IRIS Hub is the first self evolutionary blockchain launched in the Cosmos ecosystem.