On October 10th, Polkadot China Tour Beijing Station was held as scheduled. Due to the new crown epidemic, Gavin Wood was unable to arrive in person, but he presented a speech video titled “Poca Parachain and Governance” to the scene. In the video, Gavin revealed that Polkadot will usher in major technological developments in recent months, including the delivery time of the cross-chain messaging protocol, the parachain bidding plan, and so on.
Hello, friends of the 2020 Polkadot China Tour.
Today, I am very happy to share with you the latest news of Polkadot’s recent development, but unfortunately, due to the new crown epidemic, I cannot reach the scene in person. I hope that in the near future, I will be able to visit China in person to communicate with you face to face.
Q1 What are your priorities in your work recently?
Key points forward: 1) The cross-chain messaging protocol (XCMP, named gav-xcmp) may be delivered at the end of this year or early next year. 2) XCM is another part of the XCMP protocol and is named gav-xcm. This protocol is the definition of various messages, that is, the standard for interaction between chains.
Recently, the focus of work has been on the format of cross-chain messaging. For those who do not know it well, I will focus on introducing it.
Polkadot’s XCMP (cross-chain messaging) technology, this technology may be delivered in the second half of this year, or early next year , in order to achieve the purpose of cross-chain information, then Polkadot will have very strong scalability. An exciting thing.
In fact, we already have an early version of XCMP, which is currently called the HRMP version. Its functions are basically the same as XCMP, but the scalability is not strong enough. At present, you can already see HRMP on the Rococo version. On the Rococo test network, you can send assets between parachains.
Overall, this is great, but XCMP is only part of the total solution (very important half), but the other half is to “make the blockchain give different meanings to messages”, for example, the chain that deals with fungible assets, Need to receive and send messages related to fungible assets , and the identity-processing chain will have different requirements, which in turn has different requirements from the chain that specifically handles pledges.
Therefore, we have to send many different types of messages, and we have to ensure that there is a certain standard compatibility between different chains, especially when talking about the same kind of things, such as I want to transfer money to you on the chain to give you an irreplaceable Tokens, I want to pledge a certain amount of tokens, I want to support certain validators, I want to vote in a certain way, in short, we want to send a variety of messages, for this, we have to There are some standards.
You can compare the standards in Polkadot with the ERC20 token standard of Ethereum. Therefore, the essence (what we said above) is the standard that can interact between chains. Not only that, but we also want to use XCM to accomplish these tasks, that is, not only the chain can interact with the chain, but also the components can interact with each other . For example, smart contracts can start interacting with the chain and they send messages. The final message is delivered to the chain or stored in a smart contract on another chain.
Smart contracts can exist in different operating environments. You can have such a smart contract. On the one hand, it can use EVM (virtual machine) in ETH, and on the other hand, this smart contract can use Webssembly in Edgeware’s blockchain. System, so this is not only “cross-chain” messaging, but also a “cross-consensus system” messaging format .
Yes, this is the technology that I have spent a lot of time researching and developing recently.
Now, we have finally completed the initial version, which was implemented about a week ago. If you are a programmer, you can give it a try and see what’s in it. In the code branch, he was named gav-xcmp, this name is not very good, it should be named gav-xcm, but it does not matter.
How do they work? First of all, they are all a data format used to send messages between chains and define the meaning of these messages, just like transactions, but in addition, his implementation also supports you to use some adapters, so We can make interpreters of other message formats to adapt to those services that want to provide specific services to these messages. For example, if you have a balance module (Balance pallet), your parachain may have a balance module. One or more balance modules to process transactions.
Our idea is that you can insert them into the XCM engine in a very, very simple and declarative way. In this process, you don’t need to write a lot of code at all to declare that the balance module belongs to you. XCM basically All the details will be processed for you.
Our idea is to not only work with XCM and the balance module, but also with any other modules, including modules made by yourself, so that you can write your own adapter .
So far, I am quite satisfied with the current code. At present, it mainly revolves around asset transfer, which can replace and irreplaceable assets, but the framework has been formed, then we can add some new things, such as pledge ( Staking), voting, transactions, identity, etc., there can be many ideas. When we can actually provide modules for these services, we can also add new modules at any time.
So far, our current version is still very good, at least in some aspects, it is quite feasible.
In the near future, another thing we will do about XCM is the charging system, which is probably to allow the chain to charge for message processing fees, and this method can go hand in hand with the weight system, so that we can know the end of a certain system message How big it is and how much processing power it needs to consume, and then evaluate the handling fee in this way.
In addition, we have also tried to introduce a data return path, similar to error reporting, and establish a standard return data path, but this is an ongoing thing, and we hope to see this part of the progress in the next few weeks.
Another thing I have recently paid attention to is some functions of the multi-asset module. This is a very basic module and part of the standard module set. It is used to allow a chain to handle any number of assets and support Link new users, mint new assets, and transfer new assets. Therefore, our idea is to enable the multi-asset module to be used in a variety of situations, including supporting standby assets, stable coins, etc., and the issuer needs certain functions, such as some Management tools, such as freezing tokens and unfreezing tokens, minting new coins, destroying tokens, forced transfers, etc., can all use this module. These are some of the things I am writing code to achieve, and it should be over soon .
Also, as you know, something happened in the past month or two, especially as the network started, the network became more and more active . Obviously, the organizations behind Polkadot and Kusama are also constantly evolving. They will develop and grow in many ways at the same time, so we must be prepared for our own growth and success. I have also been taking time to make sure this process is not destructive.
Q2 Can you share the latest progress of Parachain? When is it expected to start the parachain auction?
Key points forward: In terms of the progress of the Polkadot parachain, 1) the Rococo testnet is still in progress; 2) the parachain technology: the effectiveness and usability (safety factors) are being resolved; 3) Cumulus is tested in Rococo; 4) A new Rococo chain will be restarted; 5) The above milestones will be completed in the next one or two months; 6) Parachain will be launched on Polkadot at the end of the year or early next year, and will be deployed on Kusama first; 7) Parallel The launch of the chain is gradual. The first batch of parachains will not be generated through auctions, but will be system-level parachains to reduce the burden on the relay chain and add more parachains; 8) Parachains will not be released until next year. Go online in April.
Parachain has also achieved some results recently. Many teams are using Rococo’s initial version of the testnet. Watching these pieces join together to form a complete puzzle is a very interesting and exciting thing. It’s really very exciting. Exciting.
Parachain technology is still in continuous progress, especially in terms of usability and effectiveness. These are basically the safety elements of parachain. A large number of developers are developing for this, but in general, the key engineering issues have been Solved, of course, does not mean that all the problems have been resolved. However, I estimate that we are likely to solve these problems within four to six weeks after ensuring the availability of prototype parachains .
In addition, it is Cumulus’s steady progress to ensure that he is as stable as possible. With the Rococo testnet, and a team that really uses Cumulus’s logic, it really helps us find problems and make it more and more stable.
In the background, we are also improving the Rococo version, using the so-called “version 0” of the parachain code, but the upgraded “version 1.0” will have considerable changes. The upgrade is in progress, and this version will be A sufficiently secure version of the parachain code is usable and effective, and can accurately support the XCMP protocol. This is an important basic layer that we need to achieve. We are one step closer to achieving full availability and effectiveness.
So it’s about two weeks or so. After this is achieved, we can expect several things to change. First, we will have a better version of XCMP that can pass messages between parachains, which will work with me I have been working hard to develop XCP to work together. In addition, the Rococo testnet will be restarted. I’m not sure if we will call it Rococo Ⅱ or other names , but it is still another parachain testnet . This testnet should It is more stable, may have better performance, and will achieve more interesting functions, especially for cross-chain messaging. XCM will be integrated, so the next one or two months will be very exciting, I think we will see After many milestone improvements, if it goes well, we can see the deployment of parachains , at least some initial parachains are deployed on Kusama .
So I think it is important to let everyone understand how we are currently progressing and understand exactly how the parachain will start. Therefore, the initial parachains are not parachains obtained by auction, but system parachains. Therefore, the role of these parachains is to complete specific functions for the Polkadot system . Their main function is to replace the work we originally intended to do. , We call these parachains “public welfare parachains”. They are parachains but do not have their own tokens. Specifically, they use DOT tokens as their main tokens. We are not giving them for nothing, but to ensure Those chains that provide Polkadot’s basic level of service can exist. Once we have the availability and effectiveness to ensure the safety of the parachain deployed on Polkadot, the problem becomes what uncontrollable factors will happen to all other parts Up .
The first thing that will happen is that these system parachains will bear most of the burden of the relay chain . We hope to reduce the burden of the relay chain as much as possible, which will allow us to have as many parachains as possible. Some of the directions we are considering are the governance content obtained from the relay chain and put it on the parachain specially used for governance to ensure that there is some kind of multi-chain asset parachain, so that we can achieve currency diversification and asset support system and many more. There may also be parachains of irreplaceable assets, but it is also possible to use the same chain. These are the basic services we know that the community must.
Of course, these system parachains are not the only providers of such services. Later, other teams can come in and develop their own parachains, which may be improved or enhanced versions of these services, but these chains will provide the most basic level of services. Before the parachain auction, we still need to do a lot of benchmark tests, program analysis and monitoring to see how stable the relay chain is after running 5, 10, 20, and 50 parachains .
We cannot expect to reach 100 or 200 parachains on the first day, but it will take a period of time to advance slowly. This will be a gradual process, which depends largely on the basic technology, especially the development of the network. Situation, this is what we still need to study.
We need to see how our test network is running. We need to ensure that what we deliver can meet the standard. However, in the next phase, which is Polkadot’s second phase, the focus will be on parachain auctions, and there may be Some parallel threads, to reiterate, we can hardly tell the exact number, but it is almost like dozens .
At about this time, we will also launch XCMP. I personally hope that XCMP will be realized one or two months after the parachain is launched. Before launching the full version of XCMP, we will launch XCMP-Light first. The first version is delivered. XCMP-Light and the reference parachain have the same time, which means that the parachains can communicate with each other, but the handling fee between them is extremely low, and the information transmission speed is extremely fast. It may take several months to wait.
Therefore, XCMP-Light, the lightweight version of XCMP will be launched first, and XCMP-Full, the full version of XCMP will be available after a while. In addition, we will do more parallel threads, you know, is to keep increasing the number of parallel threads. I hope to see him in the New Year. March and April are the upper limit of my psychological goal time .
I hope this speech can inspire you.
