Top 10 Must-Reads on Shyft Network’s Tech Stack
Shyft Network has been building an enormous amount of momentum in the past six months; we’ve met the most amazing people and worked with true visionaries and teams. Technologically speaking, we are very proud of what we’ve built and what is yet to come.
As we continue our push for launch, adoption and a global paradygm “Shyft”, more and more people have approached us asking for in-depth technical posts on what this project is all about. So we’ve put our team to work and picked the top ten technical explainers on Shyft Network and highlighted the key elements of each piece to keep it simple.
So, without further ado, here are our top ten Shyft Network tech posts::
1. Shyft Tech Update: Intro to Shyft
Chris, our CTO, goes over Shyft Network’s principles, outlines the target users and defines the type of data that the system is designed to handle.
“Shyft is a protocol that leverages blockchain technology to enable users to obtain, store, and work with data and identity quickly and securely. The Shyft Network Whitepaper elaborates on this context. In application, we’re going to release a dedicated blockchain of our own, aptly named the Shyft Blockchain…
… In layman’s terms, we’re building cool sh*t.”
2. Shyft Network Infrastructure Overview
In this post, we explain the what and why of the entire system infrastructure, it’s core optimizations, and the developments that make up the technological stack of Shyft Network.
“Contrary to what somehow seems to be popular belief, blockchains are not all that different from other technologies: they need to be built with purpose in order to be useful…”
3. Shyft Network: Purpose of the Shyft Bridge | Part 1 of 2
With interoperability and resilience against attacks, the Shyft Bridge is a unique, and particularly important element of the Shyft Network. As a centralized layer in charge of data attestation, it receives all end-user requests and cross-blockchain asset transfers through the Shyft network.
“ In order to understand how the Shyft Bridge works, we will need to understand what work has been done in the field of blockchain interoperability and how merkle trees work.”
4. Shyft Network: Purpose of the Shyft Bridge | Part 2 of 2
In this post, we follow-up on part 1 and further explain how the Shyft Bridge functions in the face of a 51% attack and what this means for the Network in terms of resilience and continuity.
“In the event of a 51% attack, the Shyft blockchain may become unusable. In this case, the honest nodes need to retain a minimum amount of information about the Shyft blockchain before it goes down.”
5. Understanding Trie Databases in Ethereum
An in depth study of trie data structures and how they are implemented into Ethereum, how its data storage layer operates, and the different intricacies that make up the ‘world state’. It’s important to remember that the Shyft Network uses an optimized version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, so, naturally, it manages data storage and states in a similar fashion.
“Ethereum’s trie data structure implementation is different than traditional trie implementations, as modifications have been made to increase the performance and efficiency, hence Modified Merkle Patricia Trie. We will go over these improvements, including the encoding systems used by the Ethereum network, and also go over its special node types.”
6. Solidity and Inline Assembly
This post was selected because it’s a handy reference guide and documentation for in-line assembly in Solidity.
“Assembly language is a low-level language used to communicate directly with the processor. A high level language such as C, Go, or Java is compiled down to assembly before execution. An interesting feature of Solidity is its support for inline assembly. Assembly is used to interact directly with the EVM using opcodes. Assembly gives you much more control, enabling you to execute logic that may not be possible with just Solidity. Here are the docs for inline assembly in Solidity. I suggest keeping them open while reading this article for reference.”
7. How We Use Ganache and Ganache-CLI
Jayper, one of our core developers, walks us through Ganache and the command line interface he uses when building on Shyft. This is a great post for those who want to build on blockchain but don’t know where to start or how to setup Ganache.
“Ganache is a great virtual server tool that you can use to test your smart contracts. It also helps you to understand and picture what is going on when you write transactions to a blockchain.”
8. Shyft Tech Update: Implementing Smart Contract Upgradability
A follow-up of the Solidity and Inline Assembly post (see number 6 above) — this post covers a couple of methods of implementing upgradeability on smart contracts, further enhancing Shyft Network’s functionality and flexibility.
“Over the past few months I’ve been working with Shyft to implement a form of contract upgradability specifically designed for working with tokens.
There is currently no set method of implementing contract upgrades. In this article, I will cover various methods of “upgrading” a contract, and their respective pros and cons.”
9. The Shyft Ring Node
The Shyft Ring Node is another key component of the infrastructure that makes up the Shyft Network. In this post, we cover what it is, how it functions and the design consideration that went behind its development.
“The Shyft Network uses EVM nodes to power its Ring Node infrastructure (we’ll discuss that later), an essential component to the ecosystem’s security and scalability.
On a high level, the Shyft Ring Node is the collection of EVM nodes that are running the Shyft Network specification.
Each node runs a modified version of the EVM that contains custom functionality for a Postgres database that stores block, transaction and account data specifically designed to populate a block explorer interface. An API is also supplied to facilitate database calls to retrieve the information for a block explorer. A React app also exists within the project that contains a lightweight block explorer that can easily be styled and customized as needed.”
10. Shyft Tech Update: Introducing Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
Early in the project, we recognized limitations in the EVM, all areas of opportunity for enhanced functionality, efficiency, lower costs, faster transactions, and better resilience. In this post we talk about the EVM and some of the enhancements that can be made in order to improve interoperability, and expand the boundaries of what Shyft Network can do.
“Like most software, a one-size fits all blockchain solution is unlikely to be achievable. Ethereum has established an incredible foundation for the the future of blockchain technology, but as the number of use cases increase, we are bound to see more and more variations. Projects such as Polkadot are looking at how we can maintain interoperability between bespoke implementations. This seems to indicate a future where blockchain won’t be a monopolistic ecosystem as we’ve seen happen with operating systems, but rather a reversion to its true nature as a data structure that we can universally and unequivocally implement.”
Wrapping up
What our dev team is building is absolutely incredible; we are breaking new ground with every line of code that is written, every concept and every process map that we draft, and we are proud of it. We hope that, when you read these posts, you too become inspired to change the world we live in.
This post was written by Juan Aja, Co-Founder of Shyft Network, and the Shyft Network Team.
Shyft Network aggregates trust and contextualizes data to build an authentic reputation, identity, and creditability framework for individuals and enterprises.
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