In 2020, the blockchain industry is surging, the DeFi bubble summer, distributed storage projects are fully rolled out, several major public chain giants are concentrated, after the enthusiasm has subsided, the second half of the year will always focus on the expansion of the public chain of Ethereum and Polkadot. Multi-chain ecology is discussed.
Just at the beginning of this month, the Ethereum project announced that the Beacon Chain main network was planned to go live on December 1, but the premise is that the minimum deposit of the storage contract is 524,288 ETH and there are no less than 16,384 validators. According to the official roadmap, the ETH2.0 mainnet launch will be divided into three stages: 0, 1, and 2. The task of stage 0 is to launch the beacon chain.
As the pioneer of ETH2.0, the importance of the beacon chain is self-evident. When we compared ETH2.0 and Polkadot before, the most frequently said sentence was: “Polkadot is the ultimate shard “ . The implication is that Polkadot and ETH2.0 are very similar in structure. So what are the similarities and differences between the “beacon chain” and “relay chain” as the core hub of the two?
ETH2.0 beacon chain: a central service manager
The beacon chain in English literally means a lighthouse and a signal buoy, which means that the fragment chain will use the signal of the beacon chain as an indication when it is working. For example, we can compare the work on the chain to the coordination of a battle. The combat strategy and formation of the shard chain will be based on the instructions given by the beacon chain, and the beacon chain will be the overall leader. “General” exists.
As the core of ETH2.0, the beacon chain will establish and maintain a new consensus mechanism for proof of rights and interests. The foundation of the beacon chain’s work is to form a team, that is, the contract deposit pledge is now, and after this step is reached, the beacon chain will start work immediately.
The first is management, which roughly manages those verifiers who have become a consensus mechanism through pledge. The specific management includes the verifier list, verifier fund management, and verifier reward and penalty distribution management. Secondly, it will provide proof and randomness for fragmented blocks. The proof means that the beacon chain will store a series of calculated strings, also called authentication. The randomness comes from a random number generator to help select block producers and pledges. By providing randomness to assign the tasks of shard verifiers, the regulators will prevent malicious incidents from happening. Third, the beacon chain is responsible for block proposals. In the gap between the previous and subsequent blocks, the proposer selected by the beacon chain will collect all the protocol votes (proofs) from the beacon chain verifier set of the previous block, and Include them in the block to be released.
Generally speaking, the beacon chain is mostly management-oriented, and there is no transaction or smart contract on it. As a “management platform” in a homogeneous state, it must have the backbone of ETH2.0 and the completeness of Ethereum 1.0. Compatibility is also a crucial step in ensuring orderly connection between 1.0 and 2.0.
Polkadot relay chain: a hub hall responsible for recording, transmission and security
The core of Polkadot’s design is cross-chain, so the network architecture design is heterogeneous and multi-chain from beginning to end. This is different from the homogeneous environment of the traditional public chain. The operating environment of the homogeneous state of the public chain implements a unified standard, even if divided The emergence of the film chain still follows the general format in the processing method, but the difference is that the network performance of the synchronous calculation of the slice is improved. Polkadot’s heterogeneous environment gives parachains full freedom. Projects can set their own consensus mechanism and customize the basic framework for development according to their needs. To a certain extent, the Polkadot relay chain must have the ability to coordinate complex environments.
This means that in the overall architecture, the environment that the relay chain responds to is much more complicated than that of the beacon chain, and the Polkadot project itself will serve as the security center of the parachain to ensure the safety of the parachain. Finality and governance. How to understand? The relay chain is like a consensus container, which collects the blocks generated by the parachain at regular intervals, and finally packs the blocks.
For example, the relay chain is like a government affairs hall system, connecting various departments (parachains), and each department is responsible for business records and handling, final review and confirmation of business, and transmission of information to other departments are all handed over to government affairs The hall will handle it. The final confirmation of this task assignment mainly relies on the powerful consensus mechanism of the Polkadot system, which guarantees the safety of the parachain project parties while allowing the project parties to focus on technology research and development and their own business without worrying about possible consensus issues in this chain .
In addition, the relay chain is not limited to the management of parachains, but also the management of parallel threads. The difference is that the parachain permanently occupies the relay chain resources, while the parachain is only occupied when needed. Moreover, a small amount of transaction types such as network governance and parallel chain auctions will occur, which also means that it bears greater responsibilities both internally and externally. Although the relay chain wants to weaken the binding relationship between the consistency and effectiveness of the parachain, but because it assumes a larger role as a security steward, security issues will be its top priority in the future relay chain technology upgrade program, which will also It is a problem faced by the entire industry.
Therefore, we see that Polkadot and ETH2.0 are very similar in general structure, but due to their different starting points, Polkadot’s heterogeneous multi-chain and ETH2.0 sharding structure still have great details and in fact. difference. In theory, ETH2.0 is to provide Dapp with sufficient scalability and performance. Therefore, the main task of the beacon chain is to ensure the security of the system while ensuring efficiency. The task of the Polkadot relay chain is more complicated.
In short, judging from the voice of the current project, the technical logic and upgrade route are based on the project’s own needs and future vision. Polkadot is creating an ecosystem of Wanchain interoperability and value interconnection, while ETH 2.0 is creating a powerful and unified underlying blockchain system, which can achieve mutual empowerment of Dapps in different industries by improving performance. There is no better one in terms of the scheme. The inferior points have set a good example in promoting the development of the blockchain industry.
