Web3 Builders: ChainSafe

Creating a more secure and accessible blockchain development environment for Polkadot and Kusama with Gossamer, a Golang implementation of Polkadot Host

Gossamer is an implementation of the Polkadot Host, formerly known as the Polkadot Runtime Environment. For those who are not familiar, the Polkadot Host is a framework which can be used to build blockchains. Similar to how web frameworks, like Angular or React, help developers build web applications, Gossamer will help developers build blockchains.

The reference implementation of the Polkadot Host is Substrate in Rust. We decided to build Gossamer in Golang because it contributes to Polkadot & blockchain ecosystems in two important ways:

1. Creating more secure networks by building additional Polkadot & Kusama node implementations and allowing others to do the same for blockchains built with Substrate.
2. Making blockchain development more accessible by providing a Go framework to build blockchains, including parachains for Polkadot.

More Secure Blockchains

In this blog post announcing the Gossamer grant, the importance of having multiple implementations is highlighted:

“Multiple implementations of Polkadot improves network resilience and adds to the decentralization of the network. The governance of the network is more democratized when multiple teams build clients which run the nodes in the network. By building the next implementation of the Polkadot protocol, ChainSafe is helping develop a robust network — meaning that if there’s an issue with one client, it won’t impact network availability — thus ensuring a healthy, resilient Polkadot ecosystem.”

As such, once Gossamer is complete, we will use it to build node implementations of Polkadot & Kusama. In addition, for any blockchain that is built using Substrate, building an additional node implementation using Gossamer is trivial; just take your existing runtime (a Wasm blob) and plug it into Gossamer.

Innovation Made More Accessible

In the Web 2.0 paradigm, web application frameworks, such as React or Angular, have lowered the barriers to innovation; the benefits of which we reap everyday. Gossamer is an equivalent for blockchains or, in other words, it is a blockchain development framework.

By using Gossamer, you can focus on building the state transition function (i.e the logic) of the blockchain, since the networking and consensus components are already built for you. These components will be modular and configurable. If significant customization is desired, any of the modules, including networking and consensus, can be modified or re-implemented directly in Go.

-Amer Ameen, Technical Project Manager at ChainSafe

📽 Sign up for ChainSafe’s live webinar taking place on Polkadot’s Crowdcast on Wednesday, April 1, 2020.

Learn more by visiting Chainsafe’s website or email info@chainsafe.io with any inquiries.