Original source: ChainNews China, written by Liu Feng: https://www.chainnews.com/articles/144069828250.htm?from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0
What is the right type of public blockchain for established blockchain applications?
OSA DC tested a number of well-known projects, looking for the perfect public chain to implement blockchain applications
Countless public chain projects came out in 2018, claiming that they would bring great value to traditional businesses. However, which are the ones that have actually been implemented successfully and have already enabled blockchain technology to transform traditional industries? In reality, companies implementing blockchain applications are also struggling to find the right underlying public chain.
Thus, with the encouragement of OSA DC, an unprecedented scale of public beta testing began. Ilya Oskin, OSA DC Blockchain Architect took charge of the evaluation.
What kind of public chain does a blockchain application need in the end?
Faced with many public chain projects, Ilya Oskin first needed to identify their exact needs. Years of experience, combined with previous experience in working on OSA DC projects with numerous retail brands, led him to think carefully about his requirements.
Ilya Oskin assumed that there was no perfect public chain. He therefore started by listing his priorities one by one and finally defined seven core requirements.
The following list states the requirements that Ilya Oskin’s ideal public chain should meet:
- There is an objective consensus. Specifically, everyone on the blockchain network can independently reach the same state, and others only use protocol rules and information transmission;
- The scalable consensus is that the blockchain network can independently reach the consensus of the active nodes without reducing the performance of core indicators such as throughput, security and decentralization;
- The decentralized consensus, meaning that everyone on the blockchain network can generate blocks based on consensus rules;
- It should be developed for a long time. In other words, the internal incentive mechanism of the blockchain can allow the nodes to continuously maintain the system operation;
- The throughput should be around 1000 tps;
- It should be able to support smart contracts;
- A complex cryptography mechanism would be a plus factor.
Analysis of several well-known public chain features and technical details
In contrast to the “hard indicators” listed, Ilya Oskin and his team began a public chain comparison to test similar blockchains.
“Fortunately, every public chain project has detailed technical performance indicators. We need to carefully study these technical indicators and the test reports that have been carried out on these projects, obtain their official information, and, of course, start the test with the team. Ilya Oskin said, “Of course, we are full of confidence and hope to find a good match from the candidate public chain projects.”
In addition, Ilya Oskin and his team detailed the technical indicators of some of the public chain projects they have compared, including many of the popular public chain projects that launched this year. This technical indicator compares documents which are circulated and referenced by many project parties:
What are the characteristics of these well-known public chains?
Overview
A new generation of commercial-grade basic public chain, through innovative consensus algorithm (BU Firework), main chain-subchain multi-chain structure (BU Orbits), main chain cross-chain structure (BU Canal), developer-friendly smart contract technologies such as (BU CodeMach), to build an Internet infrastructure that is ubiquitous in value.
Consensus
A two-layer multi-chain consensus protocol is introduced to generate a set of main chain verification nodes through DPoS protocol voting. Then, the selected verification nodes generate blocks through an improved BFT algorithm, thereby achieving higher transaction throughput and scalability, security and safety. At the same time, a double-chain structure is adopted for the main chain / sub-chain to meet the requirements of multi-chain interworking.
Incentives
Combines the incentives of DPoS and BFT so that nodes are rewarded, and continuously improve performance to gain more supporters. Ordinary nodes can also gain revenue by supporting verification nodes. At the same time, a whole node incentive scheme is introduced, so that any ordinary node can obtain the block reward by applying for the whole node, and improve the participation of the nodes in the blockchain management and service promotion.
Smart contracts
BUMO’s Smart Contract is a piece of executable code stored on the blockchain ledger with the turing-completed, environment-friendly execution engine BuVM (BUMO Virtual Machine). BuVM is based on the improved technology foundation of Google V8 and WebAssembly. It has optimized functions, increased contract execution security checks, clarified interface permissions, increased inter-contract interaction, enhanced exception handling mechanism and grammar security check, and provides multi-language support such as JavaScript, C, C++, Python, Go, etc.
Cryptography
Supports multiple signature algorithms, such as the digital signature algorithm ED25519 implemented by elliptic curve Curve25519, to solve the problem of time channel attacks.
“Ilya Oskin’s review”
- BUMO’s multi-layer blockchain structure combined with the design of hybrid data storage is ideal for large-scale data processing;
- The encryption layer looks very reliable and the elliptic curve solves the problem of time channel attacks;
- DPoS consensus agreement is not very innovative for the public chain, but it has been tested in reality.
Overview
The blockchain software and hardware architecture is combined with high-performance blockchain open source hardware and software to realize the performance expansion of blockchain distributed applications. Under the condition of ensuring security and decentralization, high TPS is realized, and low latency.
Consensus
A two-tier election mechanism is adopted to separate the outer elections and the inner elections. In the outer election, the node contribution value evaluation index is used to select the high contribution value node members from a plurality of candidate nodes; the inner election, based on the hash queue anonymous voting mechanism, calculates the high contribution value node generation area every time a block is generated. Regarding the priority of the blocks, a high-priority value node with high priority has the right to generate blocks preferentially.
Incentives
HPB tokens are system tokens that are used to support the HPB public chain and correspond to resources such as networking, storage, and computing on the HPB system. Based on the HPB consensus algorithm, the high contribution value node has the right to generate blocks, and after the high contribution value node generates a block, the system will automatically issue the token reward.
Smart contracts
With a smart contract platform that supports modular, universal virtual machines, running Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM) and NEO Virtual Machines (NeoVM), smart contracts can be written in Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, and more.
Cryptography
When data transmission between nodes is performed, an encryption channel needs to be established through key exchange. A hardware random number generator is used in the process, so that the random number seed of the key exchange is completely unpredictable, thereby protecting the reliability of the encrypted channel.
“Ilya Oskin’s review”
- HPB’s protocol relies too much on hardware solutions to meet OSA DC’s requirements for a public chain.
EOS-based public chain, for the current public chain security, offers non-standard contracts, poor supervision, low execution speed and other pain points, proposed security contracts, databases, tool kits and other solutions
Consensus
Using the same BFT+DPOS consensus mechanism as EOS, people holding EVT tokens can choose block generators through a continuous approval voting system. As long as the number of votes is high enough, anyone has the opportunity to generate blocks. The block speed is 0.5 second.
Incentives
The system token EVT is a kind of fuel. The token has a yearly addition mechanism, and the speed of addition is gradually reduced.
Smart contracts
The concept of “safety contract” is proposed. Users do not need to code directly but to use the secure contract interface to facilitate the rapid issuance and transfer of data. The security contract is not turing complete, and the most necessary functions can be realized through the interface. The issuer can be provided with the possibility of completing the service offline.
“Ilya Oskin’s review”
- EveriToken, a dPoS blockchain based on EOS technology, does not provide an increase in performance, decentralization, and security.
A new generation of public infrastructure chain project, distributed trust collaboration platform. Provides a new generation of high-performance basic public chain, including complete distributed ledger and support for smart contracts.
Consensus
The consensus engine is OCE (OntorandConsensusEngine), which is a consensus algorithm based on the dBFT consensus protocol and the verifiable random function VRF. OCE selects a set of verifiers based on a random lottery mechanism of the verifiable random function VRF. Each set of verifiers selects the biller by dBFT voting and uses the Byzantine fault-tolerant algorithm to reach consensus. The seed signature of the verifier creates the seed of the ontology, pointing to the next set of verifiers.
Incentives
Incentives are divided into two types: ONT and ONG. ONT is the governance token and ONG is the fuel token.
Smart contracts
The Go language version of the NeoVM virtual machine is used as the execution environment of the smart contract. It has turing completeness and can implement arbitrary logic with high certainty. NeoVM also has high scalability through the “deterministic call tree.” The technology can achieve dynamic fragmentation. In addition, NeoVM compiles intermediate languages such as JavaBytecode and C#MSIL into instructions for blockchain virtual machines.
Cryptography
In the data collaboration scenario, Multiparty Secure Computing (MSC) is adopted; in the data transaction scenario, full homomorphic encryption technology is adopted.
“Ilya Oskin’s review”
- Ontology’s protocol is more suitable for a private chain because of the BFT consensus algorithm.
- The problem is that BFT is not good at scalability and requires each node to communicate with each other.
- Therefore, Ontology cannot meet OSA DC’s requirements for the underlying public chain.
This new blockchain underlying network supports new business scenarios for traditional businesses, enables blockchain to connect businesses, and provides the basis for trust and value exchange for future businesses.
Consensus
The Dynamic Rights Consensus Agreement (DSC) uses a hashing algorithm. Specifically, the representative elections are first conducted from the whole network nodes, including the election of more PNT members and observers with fewer PNTs, and the selection of members and observers through the hash draw algorithm to form a number of consensus groups. The groups conduct a BFT consensus, elect the speaker from among the members, propose the blocks, and other members and observer nodes to verify. After more than 2/3 of the nodes are verified, the candidate block corresponding to the consensus group is generated. The number of consensus groups is dynamically adjusted according to the network conditions.
Incentives
Each time a consensus block is generated, the nodes participating in the accounting, including the consensus group members that generate the candidate blockchain, will receive the corresponding PNT as an incentive. The PNT incentive comes from two sources: 50% of PNT reserved for consensus accounting incentives and the transaction fees included in each block.
Smart contracts
Provide virtual intelligent running space for smart contracts and other blockchain applications, provide independent computing resources, database, file storage and other application running resources for blockchain applications. Blockchain applications cannot access other blockchain applications across Penta, data or files.
Cryptography
With multiple security policies, the underlying provides a variety of encryption technologies to choose from, such as ECC, SM2, etc., according to the progress of the project. Timely introduction of encryption algorithms that can resist the brute force of quantum computing, and avoid quantum attacks, such as Lattice-based cryptography.
“Ilya Oskin’s review”
- Penta is also a next-generation public chain that applies BFT consensus, and its BFT consensus may lead to centralization and security risks, so it is not suitable for OSA DC.
The “competition” is still ongoing…
After repeated comparisons and tests, Ilya Oskin also hopes to continue such tests. “There are a lot of excellent public chain projects on the market. I believe that there must be smart groups of people working hard to develop projects that meet our needs.”
Ilya Oskin and OSA DC team are looking forward to more projects to participate so that he can carefully select and find the basic public chain that will enable OSA DC applications to benefit more retailers and consumers.
“The world of the future will be a world based on blockchain technology. We need public chain projects to work with us to innovate for the retail industry, while at the same time letting the blockchain technology really come to the front of the scene.” Ilya Oskin said he is confident.
