According to news on October 26, at the 7th Blockchain Global Summit 2021 hosted by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood gave a keynote speech "Substrate keynote". He said that he is very confident that the parachain will be technically feasible in December, and the complete code audit has been completed. In addition, Gavin Wood also shared the status progress of Substrate and Polkadot . The second bridge audit is in progress. Colleagues will soon deploy a bridge from the test network Rococo to the bridge test network Wococo to test the feasibility.
The following is the full text of the speech:
Hello, I'm Gavin, and I'll share about Substrate. Let me introduce the difference between Substrate and other competing solutions, that is, the difference between it and other decentralized technologies. There are four main differences between Substrate and some other decentralized applications and solutions. And I think it is very important to understand these four differences and really understand the essence of these four differences:
First, Substrate is P2P, peer-to-peer.
The second difference is that it can be upgraded.
The third difference, we provide unlimited logical flexibility.
Fourth, we offer unlimited economic flexibility.
First, Substrate must achieve true peer-to-peer and decentralization. This is very different from many leading solutions, many of which tend to be more centralized and decentralized solutions, such solutions make the participants in a certain part of the network relative to others. , have greater advantages and rights. In fact, such a solution does not have P2P itself. On the one hand, it affects security, and on the other hand, it will affect whether the technology can really run under certain conditions. With the emergence of Substrate, we are truly decentralized, that is, nodes in our network, each node has the same data, and all validators in the network can obtain the same permissions. If you don't want to run a full node, in Substrate, we have a unique feature called light client, which allows customers to access decentralized applications from a series of relatively low-resource environments, such as Internet browser.
Substrate's chains are upgradable, a key element of developability and sustainability. It's easy for us to assume that the initial version of some software is perfect, that no further changes are needed, which is unrealistic and downright impossible. In the real world, software must be constantly updated throughout its substantial life cycle. To achieve this, in blockchain applications, it is through meta-protocols, which represent the blockchain logic that handles business logic. This meta-protocol is carried on top of another protocol that handles the basic consensus layer. Only in this way can Substrate allow our developers to upgrade the applications they develop and upgrade the chains they develop. And during the upgrade process, the effort required is minimal and no hard forks are required.
And Substrate has two infinities in two other key areas. The first wireless, your application invokes decentralized technology and the use of blockchain is limitless. Substrate has a so-called free execution model, which is very different from a transactional model, and the latter transactional transactional model is used by smart contracts such as Ethereum . Our model allows developers to decide which code to use and which code to run. If you want a block, use some elements to save or maintain some elements, you can simply ask for the block, decide the logic you run, and you decide. That is, you don't need to rely on the user to provide something, and let your application interpret it. And as your user, in principle, he does not need to compete with users of other applications to execute the transactional logic they want to execute. And for Substrate, you can divide the time at will within every 6 seconds and decide which logic to run.
As an application developer, you can have your own instructions. In addition we allow on-chain scheduling, allowing transactions and transaction prioritization, while allowing fee-free transactions. In general, the initialization and finalization APIs that do not exist in those traditional smart contract environments also exist in Substrate. When designing Substrate, we hope to provide you with economic freedom as a parachain developer.
Our parachain model enables parachain application developers to decide when and when users use your program. This process is the same as when you use traditional Internet applications. In doing so, this frees you from certain platform mechanisms that determine or limit user access. With Substrate's free economic model as an application developer, you can use other mechanisms at your own discretion. Things like oracle certificates or off-chain identifiers or whatever you come up with to determine if a user should use your app, and how often and when. So in principle, you can avoid all kinds of fees, just like the traditional Internet Web2.0 era, when you don't need to use the application, you don't need to pay.
We have finished talking about these four major differences and these four important elements. It is necessary for everyone to have a clear understanding, so as to better understand why we want to develop the Substrate platform and what advantages this platform will provide.
Next, I will share the latest progress of a series of things in Substrate. The first thing to share is the chain bridge, and the communication mode of the cross-chain bridge is separate from the relay chain and parachain. The cross-chain bridge represents a low-security intercommunication system, which allows communication between independent chains, although it is necessary for everyone to realize that if a chain has the lowest level of security, the chain with the lowest level of security will eventually It will affect the security of other chains. If the high-security chain is connected to other low-security chains through cross-chain bridges, the high-security chain will be subject to security risks. The cross-chain bridge allows us to make calls and achieve interoperability and interoperability of independent chains. We expect to be able to bridge two important testnets. Maybe in the not-too-distant future, we will be able to bridge the two testnets Rococo and Wococo.
We are now doing the second round of audit of the cross-chain bridge code, and now the audit has been completed, about two weeks ago. We still have two weeks to officially complete it, and we expect to complete it soon and finalize the code.
We expect some corrections, not many corrections. We expect to be able to realize a relay-to-relay cross-chain bridge between two value-carrying networks. This idea is expected to be officially realized by the end of this year, so the prospects for the two value-carrying networks are very exciting. In addition, it is expected that in the first half of next year, such as January or February next year, the cross-chain bridge between the underlying parallel chains between the two carrying value networks will be realized.
Version 2 of the cross-chain messaging mechanism brings a series of optimizations, including an expandable virtual machine model, the so-called cross-consensus virtual machine SCVM. If you are interested in the specific technical standards of this virtual machine, you can read it on Github. Version 2 has many functions, such as automatic version tracking, through which two different chains can experiment with interoperability and communicate with each other, but there is no need to synchronize upgrades. Besides that, we also introduced asynchronous error handlers. For example, if there is a problem with the message of one chain, if there is an error, the code of the other chain can modify it, that is, the sending chain. We also have another new optimization, which is the asset locking and reclaiming system, which allows the assets that are left behind either intentionally or unintentionally after the execution of XCM to be reclaimed. In this way, those unintended assets are not lost or destroyed. In addition, XCM and XVM have introduced an exception handling mechanism at the bottom layer. Such an exception handling mechanism allows different codes to run regardless of whether there is an error or not. The exception handling system can in principle also be used to introduce conditionals in XCM.
As far as the status of the parachain is concerned, we are very happy to announce to you that our parachain and the code library function of the parachain have been completed. It already has security features, and its code audit has also been completed. Of course, before this part of the code is officially put into the production environment, there are still some very important corrections, and we expect these corrections to be completed in the not-too-distant future. We hope it will be completed in the next few days, we don't expect to be later than early November at the latest. The same code will be deployed to the Canary (sound) network first, and the deployment of the Canary network will be realized in the next week or two. At the same time, we are relatively confident that the parachain is technically feasible, and we plan to deploy it on the Canary network, which can further strengthen our confidence.
Now I would like to share with you, the outlook for the industry in the next few years, and how I view the driving forces of industry changes. There are many driving forces in the industry, and one of them is scalability. That is, everyone is constantly searching for higher TPS throughput. Some teams have forgotten the fact that decentralization and security are not an optional feature, that is, they cannot be cut corners. And for Polkadot, we have not forgotten this, and we will redouble our efforts to ensure that our network is decentralized and at the same time P2P to the greatest extent, and to the maximum degree of decentralization and P2P that technology allows.
As you have just seen, there are also some trends in regulation. For example, there are some policy documents for you to read, but from these documents, one thing is very clear, that is, software development is not an area where supervision will interfere. From what I've read of these documents, I'm very happy about that, software development, it's still a very well guarded field. Generally speaking, general network maintenance or general operation, general code writing. Of course, there are still differences in the situation of different countries, and of course there are some other things, which are also an ongoing trend, and due to the strengthening of supervision, some trends may not be sustainable in the long run. Most of the trends are related to the elements of network centralization, such as RPC service providers. You will not see RPC servers centralized in Ethereum soon. In addition, such as hosting wallets, going to Centralized application websites, if there is a centralized web server behind them, these are the goals and targets for supervision. In addition, there are multi-signature wallets, which will also receive supervision attention. There are also custody services, including wallets and non-P2P stablecoins, and these projects may also face some regulation in the future. Even if it is a semi-centralized application, that is, a highly decentralized technology, there are still some applications of centralized technical elements. These applications often use centralized technical elements to increase user applications and usage, and these applications will also face regulatory difficulties.
One thing is very clear, that is to say, if the degree of centralization is higher, it means that supervision may examine in detail what the project is doing. Like regulated banking activities, you will be required to obtain some international licenses and certificates. In addition, if you can achieve more decentralization, more P2P, and ensure that all participants can participate, and everyone can obtain the highest degree of privilege, such a maximum degree of openness, Such features and applications are relatively less likely to be regulated and licensed. Although it is said that we must focus on decentralization, we also need to focus on security. Of course scalability should be the most important element in all this.
I think for industry projects, the regulatory requirements tend to be more for projects that are considered to be very centralized. For example, banks, if such theories and ideas are correct, it means that the entire ecosystem and many projects will cease to exist, at least in the long run. As far as the timetable is concerned, it will take another year, two years or even three years before we see substantive regulatory actions for these centralized or centralized-based projects. But if we look at the long term, many projects need to change.
We are committed to decentralizing everything, realizing P2P, and realizing P2P and decentralization at the basic layer. That is, at the most fundamental level, based on the applications developed on Polkadot, sustainability can be achieved in the long run. This means that other areas also need decentralization and innovation.
Fortunately, we have made a lot of progress in this area now.
The first point is governance. We need to find some alternative solutions, such as the council in Substrate, which is a multi-signature. It has a lot of control, although it is not absolute control, it has a great impact on the blockchain, and this council also requires us to rethink.
The light client avoids the RPC server, which is the neck point of RPC for any decentralized server. This point needs to be innovated, and it must be ensured that it can achieve extreme high performance. This ensures that the user experience is also feasible in decentralized applications. Similar to doing a series of startups, so that new clients and new nodes can determine where the earlier nodes are and connect with these earlier nodes, this method also needs to achieve decentralization and relies on For systems that already exist or are relatively secure, this is what we need to invest in the next one to two months. There are also other technologies, such as nodes in the network, that can maintain a certain amount of privacy from each other. Of course, it is also for maximum security, although we are indeed a decentralized network.
Finally, what I want to introduce to you here is the Substrate-based solution, which will have high performance, real Web3-level security, and real P2P. We are building one of the world's first truly P2P secure, scalable, free-to-execute platforms. Our platform hopes to be good for you, and to benefit from our platform in the years to come, and that's what I want to share with you.
Finally, I would like to share with you a piece of information, which is to reiterate the four major differences between the Substrate parachain platform and other platforms that I introduced to you at the beginning, that is, the four key beliefs, true P2P, upgradeable, unlimited Logical flexibility and economic flexibility, thank you very much for listening.