A Universal Guide to the DAPP Network
Ethereum’s Handbook of the Universal Bridging Framework and Middleware of Services
The stakes have never been higher.
While the scaling challenges of base-layer blockchains are nothing new, the growth of the DeFi sector, especially on Ethereum, has brought a newfound sense of urgency to the quest for scale. In the race to remake the financial infrastructure of tomorrow, large corporations hold a commanding lead over disruptive DeFi startups. Optimizing for decentralization comes at the cost of enhanced scalability (to understand why this is so, read up about the Scalability Trilemma.)
Incumbent giants, such as Visa and Mastercard, are shifting their attention to blockchain-based financial services as a way to tap into novel revenue streams, and with good reason. According to Goldman Sachs research, automating B2B payment processing promises “to cut the cost by up to 75% and unleash $1.5 trillion in small business productivity, so it is no wonder that large corporations are exploring novel technologies as a way to streamline B2B payments, with blockchain chief amongst them.” When you add in other key financial services such as lending, savings, insurance and even derivatives trading — all of which are being built out on blockchain — you end up with a global market worth trillions of dollars that can be unlocked by blockchain technology.
Visa and others aren’t concerned about decentralization and therefore they can easily facilitate tens of thousands of transactions a second, while the entire DeFi ecosystem on Ethereum is limited to the 15 transactions per second.
By conquering its scaling limitations, #Ethereum can move closer to becoming a key piece of infrastructure for so many industries.
The #DAPPNetwork is a universal bridging framework and middleware of powerful services that could allow #ETH to scale massively without harming decentralization.
(📣 Click to Tweet 📣)
Here is how this guide works:
- Firstly, we’ll present a high-level overview of the DAPP Network aimed at the general public who are not familiar with it yet. We will focus mainly on interoperability and bridging using the DAPP Network universal bridging framework as well as LiquidChains, our blockchain-as-a-service solution available on the DAPP Network that could be utilized to spin up customizable shards to scale Ethereum.
- If you’re a developer, we’ve got you covered with a deeper dive into the DAPP Network’s architecture and services.
Bridging Framework and Middleware Scaling Done Right: An Introduction to The DAPP Network
The DAPP Network is a universal bridging framework and middleware of powerful blockchain interoperability services, that serves as the ‘glue’ between blockchains, currently operating on Ethereum, fully compatible with EVM-based and EOSIO-based chains, that allows them to scale horizontally and enjoy a feature-rich experience.
At the heart of the DAPP Network are the DAPP Service Providers (DSPs), who maintain infrastructure, run blockchain nodes and provide scaling services to developers. These services include:
- LiquidBridge: a blockchain-agnostic bridging solution for data and tokens
- LiquidLink: two-way decentralized cross-blockchain communication network
- LiquidOracles: decentralized,trustless and customizable web oracles
- LiquidAccounts: seamless and free end-user onboarding
- VRAM: Unrestricted decentralized and affordable on-chain memory
- VCPU: access to cheap, powerful computation
- LiquidScheduler: task scheduler and automated task services
- LiquidStorage: an incentivized decentralized storage network
- LiquidDNS: designed to prevent DNS hacking
- LiquidHarmony: extension to LiquidOracles, enables easy, powerful plug-ins — LiquidSQL, web oracles, random numbers
DAPP Network as a Universal Bridging Framework
DAPP Network’s cross-chain bridge is an elegant aggregation of services and functionalities that is taking down the walls between chains to allow for data and tokens to flow freely. Developers can implement the code to give birth to a new generation of DeFi products, such as multi-chain liquidity pools and automated market makers (AMM). Furthemore, all the components are built in a standardized fashion to allow developers to add adapters for other chains as easily as possible. A universal cross-chain bridge can unlock the superior liquidity on Ethereum for other chains. Ethereum developers can in turn utilize the DAPP Network’s universal middleware to build their dApps for scale, while keeping their tokens on mainnet.
The services aggregated in the DAPP Network’s cross-chain bridge are:
- LiquidOracles: Decentralized and trustless web oracles, used to retrieve state information about paired chains and contracts.
- LiquidScheduler: Task scheduler and automated task service, used across EOSIO chains to ensure the decentralized, continuous running of the bridge contract. Responsible for scheduling the passing of messages and receipts between chains, and periodically reading from the chains involved in the process.
- The vRAM System: Unrestricted decentralized and affordable on-chain memory, used on EOSIO chains to facilitate message and receipt compression in a way that minimizes RAM resource costs.
- LiquidLink: Used on EOSIO chains to publish transactions to any implemented non-EOSIO chain. LiquidLink is currently fully-functional on Ethereum and could easily be modified for other EVM-compatible chains as well as by an interested party or the community.
As another added value, many of the other DAPP Network services have cross-chain capabilities built-in. For example, LiquidAccounts enables a single account and public key to be used across multiple contracts and multiple chains, while VRAM enables contracts to seamlessly read table entries across chains.
LiquidChains — Customizable Blockchain-as-a-Service
Another one of the other pinnacles of the DAPP Network service suite is LiquidChains, a unique blockchain-as-a-service solution that could especially benefit DeFi dApps. LiquidChains allow everyone to spin up customizable chains configured specifically for their use-case, without sacrificing on the compatibility and interoperability of public networks. The advantages of LiquidChains lie in their unprecedented customizability and in their ability to provide dApps with gas-reduced, trustless transactions while retaining access to the instant pooled liquidity of Ethereum.
LiquidChains are fast, easy, fully customizable blockchains for your project, running on the popular proof of work or proof of stake consensus mechanisms. Each LiquidChain comes out of the box with the full suite of DAPP Network services ready for use.
LiquidChains can also be equipped with any of the other DAPP Network services out of the box. Applications can run computation, oracle services, IPFS hosting, and many other functionalities on a LiquidChain for additional speed, cost-efficiency, and privacy. Maintaining a mainnet connection with DAPP Network IBC allows for periodic updates of the LiquidChain’s state to be recorded on the Ethereum mainnet for complete transparency and auditability. The connection to the Ethereum mainnet also means no tokens need to be migrated and your code does not need to be adapted to a new blockchain.
The DAPP Network introduces a novel concept to second layer scaling — that of a universal middleware that can work across multiple chains as well as provide multiple developer services. If you’re interested to learn more about the products being built on top of the DAPP Network, or even if you just want to join a vibrant, purposeful conversation about the transformative power of blockchain, you should join our community.
EdgeOS — a Browser-based Operating System Powered by WASM
EdgeOS is a new operating system for WASM that is specifically tailored for decentralized applications. EdgeOS includes everything needed for decentralized application development with features like processing, asynchronous callbacks, a forkable filesystem, and more. EdgeOS enables fully decentralized applications to be created and deployed without relying on centralized infrastructure from the front to back end.
With EdgeOS, any DAPP token holder can potentially spawn and provision any process on any node in the network, while maintaining compatibility with non-contract code. For example, a developer could run SQL, microservices, and many others Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) compatible executables with EdgeOS.
EdgeOS could be the ideal platform for Layer-2 solutions, oracles, p2p apps, and even new blockchains. At the same time, EdgeOS’s applications go beyond blockchain-related services.
Developers Zone: A Deep Dive Into The DAPP Network’s Architecture
Let us look at these components one-by-one:
Provisioning Layer
At the heart of the DAPP Network are the DAPP Service providers (DSPs). DSPs create service packages which they then offer to developers in a free market. In order to access a specific service package, a dApp smart contract needs to stake a sufficient amount of DAPP tokens as per the Service Agreement set out by the DSP. The ‘dappservices’ smart contract is responsible for managing the staking mechanism, package provisioning and quota management. Each service request is recorded on-chain and decreases the remaining quota of actions available to the dApp smart contract.
While the DAPP token is the access token to the DSP services, leasing markets and third-party staking can enable developers on any network to access DAPP Network and its services natively through their own protocol token. Already showcased by Chintai and Blockstart, leasing markets allow users to access resources on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model, providing significantly lower price volatility and a more predictable user experience.
DAPP Services Layer
Next up is the DAPP Services Layer. This contains the protocol with which a dApp smart contract can request a specific service from the DSP. A service request is a “function-like” call to the DSP in that it has specific parameters and can trigger a response back to the contract with specific results.
There are two types of requests:
Synchronous Requests: Synchronous requests block the User Contract from executing a transaction and propagating it on a peer-to-peer network until the request returns a response to the contract. Oracle requests represent one such example. When an action requires external price data to be fetched, the oracle data is preloaded prior to completing the execution of the action instead of requiring a later callback. This provides increased responsiveness to users as their original action appears to execute immediately. Another example is the vRAM System, which is explored at length in our vRAM Guide for Experts.
Asynchronous Requests: The dApp smart contract dispatches an event representing the async service request and continues executing a transaction without failing. For example, automating tasks with LiquidScheduler, a cron-like service running on the DAPP Network, involves dispatching an asynchronous request that can be fulfilled at later times.
LiquidChains
In order to spin up a customizable LiquidChain, chain creators must first map out the specifications they wish their chain to possess, including the consensus model which forms the basis of their network. Chain creators then select the DSPs that serve as validators on their chain. Any number and configuration of DSPs can be chosen, thus allowing chain creators to select their preferred level of decentralization. While LiquidChains is a service that is accessed via the same staking mechanism as the rest of the DAPP Network services, it is qualitatively different in a sense that it serves as a prerequisite for accessing all the other DAPP Network services within the Ethereum ecosystem.
DAPP Service Providers (DSPs)
DSPs run specialized nodes that comprise several instances including:
- Dockerized Ethereum Node: A dockerized node of whichever public network the LiquidChain needs to connect to, such as Ethereum.
- Interplanetary File System (IPFS) instance: The DAPP Service providers use the IPFS as a decentralized storage layer.
- PostgreSQL database: The PostgreSQL database is used to support the functionality of the DAPP Service provider by logging and preventing duplicate blockchain events.
- Gateway instance as an API: The gateway instance is the API that connects the following three instances, processed transactions, and fetches IPFS data.
- EOSIO Nodeos state history plugin enabled instance: The EOSIO Nodeos instance is a read-only node that listens and emits on-chain activity through a web socket.
In addition to validating the chain and processing transactions, DSPs could natively integrate any DAPP Network service the chain creator wishes to access into the LiquidChain. A LiquidChain DSP can serve as either a validator, a service provider, or both.
EdgeDSP as Next-Gen Bridging Agents
EdgeDSP is a lightweight node based on cutting-edge WASM technology which can run in a web browser and allow any arbitrary code to compile and execute. One of the major benefits of the blockchain-agnostic EdgeDSP nodes is that they can not only provide the DAPP Network services that make interoperability between blockchains possible, but they can also listen to any chain and write that information to any other chain.
- Any two chains could be candidates for an EdgeDSP connection.
- That connection can be on-demand or permanent, meaning EdgeDSPs can either facilitate long-term bridges or simply establish a cross-chain connection for a single transaction.
- It can even be utilized to connect smart contracts to each other directly, allowing for contract execution across chains. Developers could link between contracts on different chains and call those contracts seamlessly as part of multi-chain applications.
- In addition, the capabilities of EdgeDSPs make many-to-many connections possible, something that was previously unthinkable. For example, a contract on Ethereum could be called to send tokens from a Solana account to a Polkadot account.
DAPP Network Service Suite
In addition to allowing for gas-reduced transactions in a trust-minimized environment on a LiquidChain and full interoperability with the DAPP Network universal bridging framework, developers can access a range of DAPP Network services natively within their chain. Instead of curating all the necessary services from various third-party providers, developers can integrate them in a plug-and-play fashion within their dApps. Services available include:
IPFS Hosting: IPFS has upended the client-server model of file storage with a distributed, peer-to-peer file storage system. However, it lacks a way to incentivize nodes that host files to remain online and make the data readily available. With LiquidStorage, developers can host their files on the DSPs’ IPFS cluster. DSPs are incentivized to remain online and deliver the files with minimum latency. The hash of the file, which also serves as the pointer used to access the file, could potentially be kept on-chain for validation purposes.
Oracles: Native, decentralized oracle solution for sourcing any external data within your smart contract. Further information on the advantages of LiquidOracles can be found here.
Cron-Like Task Scheduler: Base-layer blockchains struggle to enable scheduled tasks since They complicate consensus and history, and there is no way to guarantee the execution of such a task without compromising the safety of the chain. LiquidScheduler is a blockchain automation tool that allows developers to schedule tasks securely. For more on utilizing LiquidScheduler to automate your dApps, read here
LiquidDNS: DSP-managed DNS service that works by allowing a contract to register its website frontend with the DNS service contract.
Zeus SDK
A cross-platform Software Development kit that features a Truffle-like interface, a package manager, and version control. With Zeus, you can install prerequisites easily, start with any of the many prepackaged reference applications, develop your contract and frontend, and compile, test, and deploy your application with simple one-line commands. And if you need specific functionality, you can even plug in your own Zeus extensions.
Try out our Zeus SDK, which makes interacting with the DAPP Network seamless and efficient!
Breaking the Glass Ceiling
The network effects of Ethereum, particularly in the DeFi sector, give the ecosystem a distinct advantage that keeps it growing. With the growth of Ethereum accelerating, the network is edging towards its glass ceiling which limits the amount of transactions per second available. Central to overcoming this barrier and getting Ethereum ready for prime time are the Layer-2-Plus scaling solutions and sharding mechanisms, such as DAPP Network’s LiquidChains, that could enable gas-reduced transactions and high throughput for Ethereum dApps.
Get Involved!
Learn more about developing on DAPP Network by checking out the Documentation and joining the DAPP Network Devs Telegram channel.
