Conflux co-founder Zhang Yuanjie said, “The moat of the public chain lies not in technology, but in ecology, and the construction of ecology lies in the community.”
Written by: Karen
Although blockchain technology has only been born for more than ten years, the natural cultural differences between the East and the West have also left some traces in the crypto world. When the ironic judgment on social media that the “Eastern Blockchain” only cares about currency prices, interests, and speculation and only the “Western Blockchain” cares about the innovation of the underlying technology has gradually become a consensus. Such a group of people want to subvert this prejudice.
Conflux, a blockchain project dedicated to becoming a world-class public chain, is also a savagely growing Eastern force. It is currently building a credible, secure, borderless, decentralized ecosystem that everyone can participate in, and It has formed a blockchain underlying network with both security, high performance and decentralization, and a closed-loop and sustainable blockchain ecosystem . Today, Conflux is driving DApps, Web 3.0 and open finance to flourish in the Conflux network.
1. What kind of project is Conflux?
1. The research team has a strong background
As we all know, the team lineup is one of Conflux’s great advantages. From the perspective of the background of the members, most of the core members of the team come from the Yao Class of Tsinghua University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions of higher learning. Many of them have also won gold medals in the International Informatics Olympiad. The core technical team of the team is also composed of senior engineers from well-known companies such as Google and Microsoft, technical managers of Wall Street hedge funds, and computer professors from top North American universities.
In addition, the research direction of the core members of Conflux is in line with Conflux’s vision. The research team is a group of ideal scientists. The founder of Conflux, Long Fan, graduated from the Yao Class of Tsinghua University with a bachelor’s degree and later obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include system security, programming languages and blockchain.
2. These organizations are supporting Conflux
Less than half a year after the project was established, that is, in December 2018, Conflux received support from a number of traditional investment institutions and Internet companies, and received US$35 million in financing, including Sequoia Capital China and Fengrui Capital , Baidu Ventures, IMO Ventures and other institutions have also reached a valuation of over 400 million U.S. dollars after financing.
Even many organizations that support Conflux said, “If there is a group of people or a project in China that can base China’s blockchain technology on the world and truly occupy this high point, it must be Conflux.”
3. The working mechanism of Conflux
Official information shows that Conflux is a scalable and decentralized underlying blockchain platform with high throughput and fast confirmation. Its core theory is that it can allow different blocks to be generated at the same time and use a directed acyclic The sorting algorithm of the graph (DAG) concept is used to avoid the problem of forks. First, determine the overall sorting of all blocks, and then determine the derived transaction sorting, so as to improve the Nakamoto consensus and break the current system throughput limit.
In addition, Conflux uses the original GHAST consensus protocol. The GHAST protocol can process concurrent blocks optimistically without discarding any forks, so it can make full use of network bandwidth to obtain higher throughput.
The GHAST protocol can also dynamically determine the weight of each block according to the topology of the Conflux block relationship (called a tree graph), so as to obtain high throughput while ensuring the confirmation speed and activity of the consensus system.
4. The origin of Conflux
The idea of Conflux first originated from the blockchain lecture given by founder Long Fan at Tsinghua University in 2017. The lecture discussed the space for improvement in the field of blockchain, especially in the field of public chains, and determined the use of tree-graphs to provide the throughput of public chains.
Starting in 2018, the Conflux team began to do basic theoretical research and combined the modified version of the Bitcoin core code with the tree graph algorithm for intranet testing.
In May 2018, Long Fan, Teacher Yao Qizhi and others published their research results as a paper “Scaling Nakamoto Consensus to Thousands of Transactions per Second” to discuss how Let the public chain consensus protocol get rid of the technical bottleneck of low throughput. Experiments have shown that the throughput of Conflux can be expanded to 6,400 transactions per second, which has surpassed Visa’s processing capacity of approximately 4000 transactions per second at the peak of the system, and is more than 11 times that of Bitcoin.
One month later, with the support of his tutor Yao Qizhi and his alumni, the Conflux project was officially established.
2. What has Conflux done more than two years ago?
1. Milestones
Which lasted nearly a year, Conflux in early April 2019, the official on-line version 1.0 test network, which is a significant milestone for the Conflux. The testnet has realized important features such as high security and high TPS. Without sacrificing security, fragmentation, and ensuring decentralization, the TPS has exceeded 3000, far ahead of other competitors.
With the promotion of the development team and the research support of the Treemap Research Institute, the Conflux testnet is constantly updated and iterated. In March of this year, Conflux announced the network release process. In order to ensure the promotion of network security, the main network was released in three phases, and finally presented users with a secure, high-performance and decentralized blockchain underlying network and a complete area. Block chain ecology.
At the end of April, Conflux ushered in a bright moment, that is, the first phase of the official launch of the Conflux network , which means that users can formally participate in and experience the Conflux high-performance underlying network and ecological services, and partners can also be on the Conflux ecosystem. Test and develop DApp. The first decentralized trading application developed on the Conflux network is MoonDEX. In addition, Conflux is also vigorously supporting the development of DApps in various fields in terms of resources, funds, and teams.
If the first phase of the Conflux network is the release of the DEX ecosystem, the second phase is mainly the launch of the PoW mining algorithm . In July, Conflux officially launched the second phase of the network. In this phase, the team’s goal is to provide more computing power, better security and a higher degree of decentralization for the Conflux network center, and gradually introduce the miner community , and at the same time launch Conflux PoW (Proof of Work Mechanism) Mining algorithm. In addition, in order to better promote the rapid development of the network, Conflux is also working with ecological partners to fully pilot mining algorithms, DEX and other types of DeFi products.
At the end of October, Conflux released the third phase of the mainnet, which is the final phase of the network launch. According to Conflux’s network release process, Conflux’s network functions are currently fully online. At the same time, the economic model in the code is released. The miner community can participate freely. The network will formally and never stop. Any technical upgrade will be completed through a hard fork.
And just in the middle of last month, Conflux also released an economic white paper . The white paper mainly includes the initial stage token issuance quantity and distribution rules, the block reward of the miner incentive model, the deposit interest reward of the mortgage, and the incentive model and ecological governance model for ecological builders. According to the Conflux economic white paper, the total amount of Conflux creation tokens in the initial stage is 5 billion, and will be gradually unlocked as the Conflux network goes online.
The prosperity of the Conflux network is inseparable from basic research. May this year, Conflux team created paper “A Decentralized Blockchain with High Throughput and Fast Confirmation” is an international academic conference in the field of computer systems USENIX ATC recruitment (employment rate was 18.6%), aimed from the consensus agreement through reasonable System design and optimization to improve the performance of the blockchain while ensuring the security of the blockchain. In this paper, the Conflux team also deployed up to 12,000 full nodes on the Amazon EC2 cluster to evaluate the actual performance of the Conflux system. The results show that when the network bandwidth of each node is limited to 20Mbps, Conflux’s consensus protocol achieves a consensus throughput of up to 9.6Mbps.
In August, the paper “Shrec: Bandwidth-Efficient Transaction Rely in High-Throughput Blockchain Systems” authored by the Shanghai Treemap Blockchain Research Institute was accepted by the international academic conference SoCC 2020 ( acceptance rate is about 24%), which is a consensus mechanism and The bottleneck of transaction forwarding network bandwidth occupies an innovative solution. This paper proposes a new transaction relay protocol for high-throughput blockchain systems-Shrec, in order to reduce the hash collision rate in transaction forwarding and improve the anti-collision in transaction forwarding of blockchain systems Attack ability and execution efficiency. Experiments have proved that Shrec can reduce bandwidth consumption by 60% without consuming too much CPU processing power during transaction forwarding.
The research results of the Conflux technical team and the Treemap Blockchain Research Institute have been applied in the Conflux network, providing a solid foundation for the high performance of the Conflux network.
2. Construction of underlying infrastructure
Conflux established the Conflux Hangzhou Application Development and Operation Center in Hangzhou in September 2019. The purpose is to focus on the development and operation of the Conflux public chain ecosystem and build a harmonious and powerful ecosystem based on the Conflux underlying public chain.
In addition to building a development and operation team, Conflux also established the Shanghai Shutu Blockchain Research Institute with the Shanghai Municipal Government in January this year, hoping to break through the basic research of the underlying technology and system applications of the blockchain while studying public chain technology , And carry out technical research on distributed consensus algorithms and blockchain system performance, so as to help enterprises and governments to popularize and implement blockchain technology, and promote high-quality social and economic development.
The Shanghai Tree Map Research Institute and the Conflux technical team continue to consolidate the construction and development of the underlying infrastructure , facilitate network update iterations, and promote the integration and in-depth application of blockchain and various industries. In April of this year, the Treemap Research Institute established a cooperative relationship with the National Engineering Laboratory for Logistics Information Sharing Technology and Application, led by YTO Express, and established a logistics blockchain joint laboratory to comprehensively promote the use of blockchain technology in logistics. The development and application of the supply chain industry.
On the other hand, in order to reduce user thresholds and migration costs, Conflux is constantly building the underlying infrastructure of DEX. The Conflux technical team has developed an asset cross-chain protocol called ” ShuttleFlow ” to provide users with a more secure and efficient asset cross-chain bridge. ShuttleFlow will unite Conflux ecological participants such as wallets, custodians, and decentralized trading platforms to form a cross-chain asset custody alliance, complete the cross-chain asset mapping in a 2/3 multi-signature method, and constitute the first level of cross-chain assets on Conflux Issuance and acceptance, and the agreement also achieves the goal of “transfer means cross-chain”.
In addition to cross-chain agreements, Conflux is also studying the use of “on-chain matching, on-chain settlement” ( DEX twin agreement ) to improve user experience. Specifically, the user first recharges assets to the on-chain protocol MatchFlow contract, and then fills in the order to the off-chain matching engine MatchFlow for matching. The matching result will first be recorded in the off-chain ledger, and then the off-chain matching engine will be synchronized to the on-chain BoomFlow protocol. .
3. Community system construction
In order to build a community willing to jointly build China’s public chain development , Conflux launched a bounty task wall system called ” Bounty ” in June 2019. The team will issue tokens Fans Coin (FC) to “bounty hunters” who have completed various tasks. These tasks include prize solicitation, DeFi ecological project experience, project promotion, community promotion, offline activities, and so on. The original intention of Conflux to carry out this activity is that it believes that in a good community collaboration, everyone can participate in the construction, everyone can benefit from contributions, and everyone can become a shareholder. The bounty system has laid a very important foundation for Conflux to gradually realize decentralization and co-build blockchain development.
It’s not just “Bounty” that unites the community. Also in the second quarter of 2019, Conflux launched its own mascot, ConFi, with the Chinese name “Roasted”.
“Baby” is a blue beaver with two big white fangs. The beaver is one of the animals with the highest IQ. “Roasted Boy” has many different emoticons, and he likes to write code, animation and two-dimensional culture. Conflux hopes to use this mascot image to shape the community culture and promote community autonomy in an animation and two-dimensional way, rather than to package and specifically promote the team founder. Specifically, Conflux uses comics, B-site videos, or character blogs through the “Roasted Talk” column to provide community members with easy-to-understand knowledge about the popular science blockchain, and introduce team members or use Q&A to solve community questions. It will also make its own observation reports on some hot events such as the security of the blockchain industry and the central bank’s digital currency.
“Bounty” and “Roasted” continuously attract users to actively participate in Conflux’s community construction and ecological environment, and further promote the project to move forward towards community autonomy.
It can be seen that, compared with other blockchain projects such as public chains, Conflux has become a clear stream in the chain circle, and it has succeeded in getting out of the circle by shaping the community culture, for example, Conflux under the name of “Roasted TV” Dozens of popular science and teaching videos related to blockchain and digital renminbi have been released on station B. A recent popular video “Understanding Digital RMB DCEP in Three Minutes” has received tens of thousands of views. The number of Douyin fans of “Roasted” has reached 24,000, and has gained over 130,000 likes.
Conflux, which uses novel two-dimensional comics and videos to promote to young people, and its unique cultural shaping will undoubtedly bring the community together and attract more new users. In addition, the progress of Conflux has been reported by many mainstream media such as People’s Daily Online, China Net, Xinhua News Agency, etc.
3. Conflux Ecological Layout
From the construction of the underlying infrastructure to the development of the community, from the establishment of the Hangzhou Application Development and Operation Center and the Digital Map Research Institute to the community technical committee, from the development of its own public chain to incubating ecological projects, Conflux has completed the transformation from a public chain to an ecological architect.
As the co-founder Zhang Yuanjie said, the moat of the public chain lies not in technology, but in ecology, and the construction of ecology lies in the community .
The philosophy of Conflux development community is to let the community truly understand Conflux and participate in the construction and governance of the community. In this process, Coinflux will organize community activists and empower them to further strengthen the community.
Focusing on empowering communities and incubating ecological projects, Conflux ecology and community construction continue to reach new levels.
1. Gradually empower communities and promote ecological construction
In order to prevent the Conflux Foundation from occupying a large proportion and gradually decentralize and empower the community in a real sense, the Conflux DAO Community Technical Committee was formally established in May this year. It is composed of a community technical committee, a comprehensive committee, and a community entrepreneurial team. Create a diverse and prosperous Conflux ecosystem.
Among them, the community technical committee is spontaneously organized by community members and is responsible for promoting technical community promotion and ecological project construction. In terms of ecological project incubation, the community technical committee is also developing infrastructure around Conflux, such as various language SDKs, smart contract public libraries, wallets, and oracles, etc., and continue to maintain them. On the other hand, the committee will also screen DApp projects initiated by the community and independently carry out transitional work such as budgeting and approval. Currently, there are nearly 40 projects approved by the community technical committee.
In addition, Conflux also launched the CIP mechanism in August this year, namely Conflux Improvement Proposal (Conflux Improvement Proposal), to propose new features for the Conflux network, collect community suggestions, and record proposal documents.
All content related to functional improvements, core code, and ecological development can be proposed on CIP. CIP will play an important role for the Conflux network to move from a centralized development team to decentralization in technology research and development.
2. Funding ecological projects to create a diversified ecosystem
In order to fundamentally promote the development of the entire ecosystem, Conflux launched the Ecosystem Funding Program in July this year. The Conflux program awards a total of more than 2.4 billion CFX tokens. The funding objects include development tools and infrastructure that can make the Conflux network easy to access and combine. , Decentralized applications that can promote user adoption, liquidity, and composability on the Conflux network.
From the categories funded by Conflux, we can learn the development direction Conflux is currently exploring. Among them, the types of tools and infrastructure it plans to fund include development environments, blockchain projects that achieve interoperability, projects on “oracles, identity authentication, land management, and intellectual property rights”, SDK and key management, etc. Mobile development tools and standards for non-fungible tokens (NFT) and interchangeable tokens (RFTs). Decentralized applications include derivatives for perpetual swap products and leveraged transactions, as well as automated market makers (AMM) DEX, Bitcoin and Ethereum cross-chain projects, and stable currency micropayments such as USDT on Conflux or Projects of settlement channels, identity authentication solutions, and lending platforms.
Currently, the list of the first batch of grants granted by the Conflux Ecosystem Funding Program has been announced, including Bitquery, Decentology, DeepSEA (CertiK), Fullet, Mixpay, Simpli DeFi and Superfluid. Conflux will fund the development of new infrastructure and access to Conflux’s DApp through token support.
3. Construction and development of ecological projects
In order to fully promote the development of the DEX ecosystem, Conflux also launched a DEX ecological acceleration plan. Members who join the program can independently provide DEX services to their users based on the cross-chain assets and high-performance matching engine provided by Conflux.
At present, MoonDEX, a decentralized trading product based on the ShuttleFlow cross-chain protocol and the DEX twin protocol, has been online for nearly half a year. Another loan DeFi product FLUX is currently being developed with the cooperation of the community technical team, as well as a decentralized insurance project. Several products such as, encrypted input method will also be launched in the near future.
It is worth mentioning that, thanks to the advantages of technology and network, the Conflux ecological project MoonSwap successfully migrated from Ethereum to the Conflux network in September this year. Compared with the Ethereum chain, MoonSwap users can have a faster, smoother and low-cost user experience, which is a successful demonstration for other projects to migrate from Ethereum to the Conflux network. For Conflux, this is a brand new attempt and a successful case of China’s public chain.
In addition, Conflux is also actively exploring in the highly anticipated NFT (non-homogeneous token) field. Conflux’s first NFT project “roast Aberdeen City” (ConFi CITY) is the first block chain technology combined with the world’s blind box collection game. Roaster City will issue a limited edition of 8 types of Roasted Boy Trendy Blind Boxes, a total of 71,000 pieces will be issued, and will never be issued. Roaster City will also issue a limited number of encrypted collections corresponding to the number and style of the Roaster Blind Box-Digital Roast (Crypto ConFi). Each roaster has a unique number, digital identity on the chain, appearance and fashion. At present, MoonSwap has launched a strategic cooperation with ConFi CITY, and the first batch of 5061 NFTs will be issued on the MoonSwap platform.
This also means that what Conflux presents to users is not only a low-level blockchain network with security, high performance and decentralization, but also a closed-loop complete blockchain ecosystem with both DeFi and DApp applications. .
Fourth, Conflux’s vision
Since the 21st century, the Internet, which represents the spirit of openness and sharing, has always been the carrier and hotbed of economic and social development. At the same time, while the Internet brings us convenience and speed, the hidden risks are self-evident. The monopoly of giants, the restricted access or borders of the Internet, and the asymmetry of information all affect the Internet. Everyone on.
As countries vigorously develop blockchain technology and accelerate the implementation of blockchain applications, Conflux hopes to use the historical opportunity of iterating from centralized to decentralized systems to build a platform that does not require access and is extremely inclusive to break The inertial monopoly model of Internet giants and the creation of a credible, safe, and borderless decentralized ecosystem, allowing information to flow freely in the Conflux network , so that everyone can experience the decentralized system in life change.
Conflux’s vision at the beginning of its establishment was to make China’s blockchain technology based on the world , promote the development of blockchain construction and application, and then change the technological landscape and the world landscape.
Perhaps you are on the sidelines of whether Conflux can become a world-class leader in the blockchain industry. But when you understand that Conflux has demonstrated the resources and capabilities to realize this vision, its future development will be very worth looking forward to.
Of course, Conflux’s goal is more than that. As Long Fan, the founder of Conflux, said, only when the cost of using the blockchain is reduced, can all walks of life be truly empowered. What Conflux wants to do most is to truly solve the bottleneck of blockchain usage , a public chain that can be used by everyone, and build an ecology and environment for everyone to make blockchain innovations, thereby promoting social development and help Enterprises realize digital transformation and construction.
V. Conclusion
With the release of the final stage of the main network, the Conflux network will enter a period of stable development, and a virtuous circle ecosystem with assets, users, ecology and sustainable development will also be formed.
As a public chain project with both technical and network advantages and complete ecology, Conflux’s future development potential is very worth looking forward to. Looking forward to the future, Conflux is expected to actively promote the integration of industry and blockchain and the in-depth application of blockchain while continuing to develop its own network ecology, and will work with ecological partners to promote the construction of blockchain and help companies move higher and higher. Faster development goals are advanced, so that China’s blockchain technology can go abroad and gain a foothold in the world.
