If consensus mechanism is the soul core of blockchain, then for blockchain, especially for alliance chain and private chain, cross-chain technology is the key to realize value network. It is a good medicine to save alliance chain from scattered and isolated islands, and a bridge to expand and connect blockchain.
Since bitcoin’s birth seven years ago, hundreds of rival coins have been developed with all sorts of new advantages and features, but bitcoin’s dominance remains, while many of its clone rivals have faded into history. Although bitcoin has many disadvantages and limitations, it is also the most decentralized, most distributed nodes and the most fair blockchain. In terms of digital currency status, number of nodes and decentralized authority, Bitcoin still has great advantages. At the same time, blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin stock are lagging behind in terms of technology and application, posing a considerable threat to bitcoin blockchain, while bitcoin-based applications are limited due to the difficulty of development. In order to innovate while preserving the decentralized guarantee of the Bitcoin network, side chain technology was introduced. Side chain is a new block chain based on anchored bitcoin, which realizes new financial ecological goals and further expands the application scenarios of bitcoin network in a converged way.
On the other hand, with the development of the blockchain public network of cryptocurrency, alliance chain and private chain technology are widely adopted by commercial institutions, especially financial institutions, based on the consideration of transaction performance, capacity scale, privacy protection and compliance supervision. Than male in the chain, now the alliance chain development momentum is much more bright, but we need to guard against is, don’t let the alliance chain into pure centralized or more centralized, compared to the traditional block chain design technology, now most of the league chain apparently didn’t provide too much can achieve irreversible or way of reducing the risk of centralized trading, Such centralized trust puts the entire network at risk due to network censorship and simple failures on the blockchain. In contrast, under public blockchain frameworks such as Bitcoin, no one can change the confirmation of a transaction once it has been transmitted, and neither a court order nor the whim of a small number of participants has the power to freeze funds or impose fines. As for the affiliate chain, whether it is subjective group evil or due to overwhelming censorship or multi-node failure risks, their users cannot completely trust and rest assured.
Elwin that coalition of chain and chain private chain from a certain extent has violated the blocks to the center of value and trust system, to block the inside of the chain digital assets cannot directly transfer between different block chain, actively or passively caused the value of the island, the various connection block chain across chain technology also begin to pay close attention to by people and explore.
At present, the cross-chain technology of blockchain is still in the research and trial, and has not been used on a large scale. Elwin tried to introduce some current research cases of related technologies.
1 side chain
Side chains are new blockchains based on anchoring bitcoin, like dollars anchoring gold bars. Side chains are aimed at achieving the goal of the financial ecosystem of cryptocurrencies in a converged manner, rather than rejecting the existing system as other cryptocurrencies do. Using side chain, we can easily establish a variety of intelligent financial contracts, stocks, futures, derivatives and so on. You can have thousands of side chains anchored to bitcoin, with different characteristics and purposes, all of which rely on the resilience and scarcity guaranteed by bitcoin’s main blockchain. On this basis, side chain technology further expands the application scope and innovation space of blockchain technology, enabling traditional blockchain to support a variety of asset types, as well as small and micro payments, smart contracts, security processing mechanisms, real world property registration, and can enhance the privacy protection of blockchain.
The best-known bitcoin side chains are element chains launched by ConsenSys’ BTC Relay, Rootstock and BlockStream, while non-Bitcoin side chains such as Lisk and domestic Asch.
BTC Relay is a smart contract based on the Ethereum blockchain that will connect the Ethereum network with the Bitcoin network in a secure and decentralized manner. BTC Relay allows users to verify bitcoin transactions on the Ethereum blockchain by using Ethereum’s smart contract capabilities. BTC Relay uses a block header to create a small version of the Bitcoin blockchain, and Ethereum DApp developers can make API calls from smart contracts to BTC Relay to verify bitcoin network activity. BTC Relay has made a meaningful attempt to communicate across blockchains, opening the channels for different blockchains to communicate.
RootStock is a distributed platform for smart contracts built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. Its goal is to implement complex smart contracts as a side chain that adds value and functionality to the core Bitcoin network. RootStock implements an improved version of the Ethereum virtual machine that will act as a side chain for Bitcoin, using a token that can be converted into bitcoin as the “fuel” for smart contracts.
Element chain is the open source side chain project of Blockstream, which uses bitcoin two-way Peg technology. The purpose of the side chain protocol is to achieve two-way Peg, so that bitcoin can be exchanged between the main chain and the side chain. Element chain quickly brought many innovative technologies to Bitcoin. In addition to smart contracts, it also quickly brought many innovative technologies to Bitcoin, including private transactions, evidence separation, relative locking time, new opcodes, signature coverage amount and other features. These techniques can be applied in any combination to any side chain.
LISK is a next-generation blockchain platform that adds each application to a separate side chain of LISK. Friends who have used Bitcoin and Ethereum know that because bitcoin and Ethereum only have one main chain, all functions and data are added to this main chain, resulting in the rapid expansion of blocks, large block volume and long synchronization time, which is a very painful experience. Lisk under the side chain model to in dealing with a high volume of how to solve the problem of network congestion, provides a method, the user only to use the relevant application need to download the corresponding side chain, greatly reducing the invalid data synchronization, keep the efficient operation of the entire Lisk network, moreover, Lisk network with the passage of time will continue to accelerate the speed of the, The more he showed his special advantage.
2 M2
Factom uses blockchain technology to innovate the data management and data recording methods of commercial society and government departments. The core of Factom is to establish an unchangeable audit and notarization business process on blockchain. Factom originally did data storage through the Bitcoin network, and later through M2 functionality, integrating both Bitcoin and ethereum blockchain to ensure that data is secure and trusted at all times.
Roughly speaking, Factom combines all the data in the network into items or chains. The user data is stored in the items, and the chain interacts with the items. Each chain has blocks of items, which in turn generate new ones every ten minutes. At the end of the ten minutes all new entry blocks for all chains are consolidated into a directory block, which is then embedded into the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains. If there is no new entry for a chain within 10 minutes, no new entry blocks are added to the chain.
The point of Factom doing this is to make their data storage not just dependent on the Bitcoin ledger for a single blockchain, but as a meaningful exploration of linking multiple public chains.
3 Polkadot
Polkadot technology is the third generation of public blockchain technology without authorization launched by Ethcore (Parity technology), the core design concept of Polkadot is immediate extensibility and extensibility, which solves the two problems that prevent the spread and acceptance of blockchain technology today.
Polkadot plans to integrate the private/federated chain into the consensus network of the public chain while maintaining the privacy and licensing safeguards of the private/federated chain. It gives us a whole new layer of transactions and the opportunity to interconnect hundreds of blockchains.
The core idea of Polkadot is to distinguish between the way transactions are initiated and executed by counterparties and the way transactions are uniformly recorded by counterparties. Polkadot provides the basic relay-chain on which many verifiable, globally dynamically synchronized data architectures are built, either parallel or side chains. Blockchain applications can fork Ethereum, tailor it to their own needs, connect to the Ethereum public chain via Polkadot, or set up different functions for different chains for greater scalability and efficiency.
Polkadot is still focused on Ethereum, connecting it to private chains, and upgrading it to other public chain networks, eventually allowing Ethereum to communicate directly with any chain.
4 Interledger
There are always problems with transferring and exchanging value between different ledgers. For example, Elwin hopes to use bitcoin as a medium to remit money to his overseas colleagues Jam. Elwin only has RMB at present, while Jam only accepts US dollars. In this transaction, Elwin first converts RMB into Bitcoins and then converts bitcoins into DOLLARS to Jam. However, the problem here is that the currency price will be unstable, leading to the loss of value. Ripple, Stellar, Circle, etc., are the key to solving these problems. The core idea of all of them is basically the same: the third party that the ledger provides guarantees to the sender that their money will only be transferred to the connecter when the ledger receives proof and the recipient has received payment. The third party also guarantees the connecters that they will receive the sender’s funds once they have completed the final part of the agreement.
The Interledger Protocol, or ILP, is led by Ripple to launch the Interledger Protocol, which will connect different ledgers to create collaboration between ledgers. Interledger protocol is applicable to all accounting systems and can contain the differences of all accounting systems. The goal of ILP is to create a unified global payment standard and a unified network financial transmission protocol.
Financial institutions are basically running their own accounting systems in their own networks. Even with the application of blockchain technology, they are also running their own private chains or alliance chains in their inner circles. This is not only to deal with regulatory compliance, but also to protect their internal data to avoid leaks.
ILP was born out of Ripple’s initial difficulty in promoting business, with banks preferring to use Ripple source code to build their own private chains rather than connect to Ripple. Since it is difficult to build a global financial transport protocol that everyone can support, Ripple is developing a protocol that can link together all the bookkeeping systems we are currently using.
The Interledger protocol creates a system in which two different ledger systems can freely transfer money to each other via third-party “connector” or “validator” machines. The billing system does not need to trust the connector because the protocol uses a cryptographic algorithm to create funds escrow for the two billing systems and the connector, and when all participants agree on the amount of funds, they can trade with each other. The ILP removes the trust required by the participants in the transaction, and the connector does not lose or steal money, meaning that the transaction does not have the protection of a legal contract and excessive scrutiny, significantly lowering the bar. At the same time, only the participating bookkeeping system can track the transaction, the details of the transaction can be hidden, and the “validator” is run through encryption algorithms, so the details of the transaction are not directly visible. In theory, Interledger can be compatible with any online bookkeeping system, and banks’ existing bookkeeping systems can use the protocol with only minor changes.
Ripple allows banks around the world to trade directly without a central counterparty or correspondent bank, thus allowing the world’s different currencies, including fiat and virtual currencies, to be transferred freely, almost free, with zero delay. Circle lets users send a message to initiate instant domestic or cross-border transfers, receipts and payments without a fee. Ripple and Circle are being embraced by the capital markets, and Elwin sees their rise as less a result of cross-border remittances and peer-to-peer payments than a revolution in value exchange, linking ledgers and making it as easy to exchange money over the Internet as to exchange information.
Five other
Cross-chain authentication Platform: Tech giant Microsoft has teamed up with startups Blockstack Labs and ConsenSys to build an open source authentication platform that aims to integrate bitcoin and ethereum blockchains. They are using ConsenSys’ uPort to ensure interconnection with the Ethereum blockchain, and then Blockstack’s OneName to integrate the platform with the Bitcoin blockchain. This cross-chain solution can be extended to all future blockchains, or entirely new decentralized distributed systems.
Bletchley: Microsoft has launched the blockchain project Bletchley, which is an architecture and solution for the blockchain ecosystem, aiming to create an “open and modular blockchain framework”. It is “to create blockchain enterprise ecosystem alliance with Microsoft’s own architectural approach”. Bletchley includes blockchain middleware and cryptobookmark Cryptlets. One of the core functions Bletchley blockchain middleware will provide is blockchain gateway service, which uses services similar to Interledger to provide the ability to communicate with each other for interconnected distributed ledger. Cryptlets will support interoperability and communication between Azure and other public/private clouds, ecosystem middleware, and other customer technologies. Bletchley will be open to multiple blockchain protocols, supporting multiple protocols such as HyperLedger and Ethereum, enabling blockchain middleware and Cryptlets to run smoothly regardless of the underlying blockchain platform.
Ethereum Alliance Blockchain Network: Microsoft is about to officially launch ethereum Alliance blockchain network based on Ethereum technology. Enterprise users will be able to quickly deploy private, semi-private, or Consortium Blockchain networks, as well as public Ethereum nodes via Azure. Microsoft hopes the project will help the industry unite to create more complex alliances to take advantage of the network effects of immutable shared ledgers. Microsoft’s overall goal for the service is to help the global industry forge blockchain alliances.
Multichain: Multichain is backward-compatible with bitcoin, so users can import existing bitcoin applications into Multichain. Rather than supporting a single chain like the Bitcoin kernel, MultiChain can be configured to support different blockchains on the same network simultaneously. MultiChain is able to support many third-party assets and can convert private and bitcoin blockchains to each other.
Dragonlink: Dragonlink is a blockchain platform that mixes public and private blockchains. It has strong interoperability with other public and private blockchains. Dragon chain blockchain has a total of five levels of various types of nodes, in any level of node verification processing, you can choose to connect and contact with other blockchain. For example, the first layer is a business node that processes transactions and can decide whether a transaction is approved or rejected. To provide a more decentralized implementation, bitcoin network or other blockchain based on PoW consensus mechanism can be used to achieve consensus processing of transactions.
Taiyi Blockchain: Taiyi blockchain supports cross-chain transactions and multi-chain interactions. Taiyi cross-chain transaction has two modes. The first mode is the two-way transaction between logical chains designed based on taiyi superconducting network, which is one-to-one cross-chain transaction without the participation of a third party. The second mode is one-to-one cross-chain transaction without the participation of a third party based on the multi-signed smart contract initiated between the unique logical chains of taiyi blockchain. The multi-chain interaction includes, on the one hand, the interaction of value transfer chain and information record chain within the industry, and on the other hand, the interaction of blockchain with identity chain, credit chain, data storage chain, custody chain and other basic service functions. All chains are interconnected to provide users with reliable, safe, fast and efficient services.
6 conclusion
Blockchain is technically a decentralized database and distributed ledger technology, while at the business level it is a value network, in which the more and more distributed the effective nodes connected, the greater the stack of value that may result. Blockchain is the core infrastructure of value network space. The application of blockchain should not be limited to the application of alliance chain, but to circle the value in a small range. We need cross-chain technology to connect and expand different blockchains and build a highway of value network.
Source: CSDN
Author: Gao Zhihao
Blockchain 100 Lecture: HiBlock Blockchain Community Cynthia
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