At the first Polkadot Decoded community conference on December 3, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood and host Laura Shin had a fireside conversation.
The following is PolkaWorld’s summary of some dry content from Gavin’s sharing. This article is the first half of the sharing, mainly including Polkadot’s vision, Polkadot’s abstraction, parachain slot auctions, the difference between PLO and 1CO, etc. Half of the content will soon be published on the PolkaWorld public account.
What is the vision of creating Polkadot? What problems is Polkadot trying to solve?
Polkadot hopes to create a more general and abstract model to solve some problems in the blockchain industry.
Bitcoin opened the basic scripting language, Ethereum expanded more financial transactions, and Polkadot hopes to create a more general model. On this basis, we also hope to solve some basic scalability issues, such as how to reach more transactions, and how to handle a lot of work on the network. So these two topics are symbiotic, that is, versatility and scalability.
Our vision is to make “Make blockchain great again” and lead the blockchain to take a step forward. We want to solve our known existing problems. In fact, if we can travel to four or five years ago, we will find that people were also talking about “how to process different transactions on multiple nodes” and “we really need to become more generalized”. These are actually Polkadot’s attempts solved problem.
Specifically, what is universal and abstract? You said that Polkadot is a meta-protocol. Can you explain what it means?
The “meta” of the meta agreement means transcendence. The “meta agreement” refers to the agreement that manages other agreements. You can build other agreements on the basis of it. It is the agreement of the agreement . I mention the meta-protocol here because it is a lower-level, basic, and simple protocol, and we build on the basis of what we generally think of as protocols.
For example, the Bitcoin protocol is to spread out the blocks. When you execute and interpret the blocks, the transactions in the blocks are like scripts, but it means to send some bitcoins to a certain address. It is a protocol through which the nodes of the Bitcoin network know how to interpret these blocks. In essence, it is a language. But once you confirm this agreement, it is like being carved on a stone. It is difficult to change, improve, add new features, and fix bugs . It is very rigid. The meta-protocol is the lower layer of the protocol and defines the protocol. The advantage is that because the protocol is based on the meta-protocol, you can easily adjust it, you only need to follow the rules of the meta-protocol, and the master protocol can adapt, evolve and iterate over time .
Then the next question is “how to change or iterate the meta-protocol?” . Our idea is that we make it as simple and abstract as possible. Let’s choose an existing technology that has been verified. Many smart people and stakeholders have discussed and concluded that “this may be the best way to make a meta-agreement.” So we chose WebAssembly because WebAssembly is almost the industry standard, and it has been iterated. In the beginning, there were actually two separate technologies, one built by Mozilla and the other built by Google, which were combined to form WebAssembly. Because it has gone through a lot of iterations, we are unlikely to need to change it again, so it is a good foundation. We can build something on top of this meta-protocol and define everything else based on it. This is the meta The source of the agreement.
So Polkadot protocol, such as parachain, governance, balance, Dot protocol, staking, etc., these things are constantly changing, but its underlying is a constant meta-protocol, which is why we chose a tested technology like WebAssembly . The meta-protocol is really mainly about flexibility and abstraction, because the Polkadot protocol is not very abstract on top of it. It has specific sharding, extension logic, etc. It is still a collection of many views, while WebAssembly does not carry any views at all. It is not even our opinion.
“Meta protocol + protocol” is a binary structure . In fact, the process from Bitcoin to Ethereum to Polkadot is the same. Bitcoin is basically not programmable, and Ethereum is programmable, but the computing model is very limited, such as gas, Dynamic gas price, dynamic resource calculation, limited storage, etc. Polkadot has completely changed this model, because we have a parachain, which is more abstract and universal. It is not just a small piece of code like a smart contract, but a whole parachain, which can do anything you can imagine. What the chain can do is much more abstract.
Why is it much more abstract? You can implement a smart contract in the blockchain. Edgeware and Moonbeam are already doing this, but you cannot build a blockchain in the smart contract. Smart contracts don’t have so much computing power, just like You can’t stuff your shoes into your feet. So we say that Polkadot’s model is more general than the smart contract model . Although this does not mean that parachains are more useful than smart contracts at any time, but anything you can do with smart contracts can be done with parachains, and vice versa.
Polkadot has a parachain. Can you define a parachain and the difference between it and parallel threads?
Parachains are just one card slot, which is limited, just like computer cores . Now some computers have 6 cores, 8 cores or even more cores, which can handle calculations for specific applications. For example, if you open a lot of windows, one core may be processing video, another core is processing mail, and another core is playing music. They can do different workloads, the same is true for parachains, but in the blockchain, one of the parachains may be doing smart contract transactions, the other may be doing transfer transactions, another may be doing governance, and the other may be doing Staking is optimized, so multiple parallel chains can work at the same time in each time period. We use blocks to measure time, so so many things can be done at the same time in a specific block.
Parallel threads are used when an application does not need to process transactions in every block. It may need to be processed once every 10 blocks, that is, a transaction is 1 minute instead of 6 seconds. But this time is reasonable. After all, Bitcoin transactions sometimes take 1 hour, so 1 minute is enough for some applications. For these applications, parallel threads are more suitable.
Can you give an example, which applications are more suitable for parallel threads instead of parallel chains?
One example is Oracle . Some scenarios are uploading data from the outside world to the chain. For some types of data, uploading one every 6 seconds seems too much. For example, weather data may be sent every day or every hour. Just once, and you don’t need to upload it exactly at a certain time. This scenario is very suitable for parallel threads.
Another example is some traditional applications . For example, an insurance company whose business is mainly in the United States. Generally speaking, people will not process insurance claims at 4 in the morning, but usually during the working hours of the day. So this type of business is also more suitable for parallel threads, because 60% of the time does not need to process transactions.
Parachain card slots have a time limit, so what if applications built on those parachains, such as an oracle, want to keep running?
If you asked me this question a few years ago, there may not be a good solution yet, but we proposed parallel threads about a year and a half ago. Parallel thread is a pay-as-you-go parachain. Usually it doesn’t work. It only works when you pay, but you only pay for one block at a time.
If your blockchain is useless, it will be difficult to raise funds to renew the slot, but (losing slots) does not happen overnight. You have 18 months to convince others that your chain is useful and let you The token is valuable, so the lease can be renewed. You have 18 months to secure the next 6 month lease.
Even if you can’t renew the lease in the end, you will not become a plume of smoke and disappear out of thin air. Your chain is still there. The application above can use passive data migration, and you can still use parallel threads in a pay-as-you-go way. To continue running . It’s like you bought a mobile phone number. The package fee is $50 a month. If you don’t want to use the package any day, you can keep the number, but you can change it to pay according to the call time.
This question is of concern to many people on Twitter. When will the Parachain slot auction be conducted and when will you develop it?
Until we know when the parachain will go live, we will not go to auction , because everyone needs to lock their DOT. It is not good if everyone does not know how long their coins will be locked.
Therefore, the auction of parachains has to wait for us to test the parachain on the chain to be launched (such as Kusama/Polka).
You proposed the concept of PLO (Parallel Chain Lease Issuance). What is the difference between it and 1CO (Initial Token Issuance)? How does it circumvent the regulatory problems faced by 1CO in the United States?
We call the parachain lease “Crowd-loaning” , which is similar to crowd-funding, but you don’t need to actually hand over your hard money in exchange for tokens, it is just a loan , You lock your DOT for a specific period of time, after unlocking, you can still get your DOT back.
The important thing is that the locking process takes place on the Polkadot relay chain. You don’t need to transfer money to the project team, so you don’t have to worry about the project team running away. The Polkadot protocol itself guarantees that these coins will return to your hands after the lock-up period ends. This lock-in does not involve transfers, so this may not be a problem for the regulator.
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