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Source: Liesl Eichholz
Original title: Beyond Monolithic: The Modular Blockchain Paradigm
Modular Blockchain
Modular Blockchain is the latest model in blockchain design. The concept of modularity is initiated by Celestia, and the concept of modularity is quickly becoming a narrative that defines categories when facing the challenge of orders of magnitude expansion of blockchain.
But why do we need a modular blockchain? Please consider the following four key points:
1. In order to realize our vision for web3, increasing throughput is essential.
2. In order to realize our vision for web3, decentralization is essential.
3. Increase throughput without maintaining decentralization cannot be scaled.
4, the current monomer L1 and L2 expansion solutions are not sufficient to achieve true scalability.
is based on these principles and it is obvious that we need to look for new models to realize our vision for web3. Modular blockchain is the most promising new model.
What is a modular blockchain?
Before delving into the above four statements, it is important to understand the basic knowledge of monolithic blockchain and modular blockchain.
The core functions of blockchain:
●Execution-Transaction processing and calculation
●Close-Solve disputes and bridge construction
●Consensus-Transaction sorting
●Data availability-Ensure data availability
Traditionally, blockchain design is monolithic. This means that all the functionality of the blockchain is processed on a single layer. The argument of
modular blockchain is that a single blockchain does not need to handle all these components themselves. Instead, by breaking down these core components, a single blockchain can focus on specific areas, resulting in significant optimizations.
Monolithic and modular blockchain stack
modular blockchain stack consists of multi-layer modular blockchains that depend on each other to create a system containing all the components mentioned above. Modular blockchain is any chain belonging to a modular blockchain stack. Why is
modular?
Basically, blockchain is to protect and promote individual sovereignty. Our vision for web3 is to make up the system that forms the structure of our digital world, accessible to everyone, and is decentralized, scalable and secure. We have considered four points above
, which prove the development of the new blockchain model - specifically, the modular model. Let's explore further:
1. To realize our vision for Web3, increasing throughput is necessary
Although the existing blockchain ecosystem is huge, demand is still far exceeding supply in terms of throughput. This has led to network congestion, making it increasingly impossible for many potential users to access the blockchain network. Networks like
are becoming increasingly crowded (Source: Etherscan)
This challenge has plagued it since the blockchain space, although adoption rates are still relatively low. Without new technology to increase throughput, it will only become a bigger problem as adoption scales to billions of dollars.
In order to achieve our vision to enable everyone to access the web3 system, they need to be able to scale up accordingly. large-scale adoption requires substantial increase in transactions and computing throughput.
2. In order to realize our vision for Web3, decentralization is essential.
decentralization is a key factor in distinguishing between web2 and web3 systems, and therefore should be the core focus of any web3 system. Without decentralization, the web3 system would not be better than its web2 system.
The following principles are crucial for decentralization:
●Openness--Anyone can view and access the system.
●Verifiability-Anyone can verify the effectiveness of the system.Any user can operate a node and ensure the correct operation of the blockchain, and its rules are supported by verifiers.
●Censorship resistance--Anyone can participate in the system as a user without the risk of being locked by the verifier.
Therefore, to realize our vision for web3, any blockchain system must be open, verifiable and censor-resistant—and at a scale that can serve billions of users.
3. Increase throughput without maintaining decentralization is without scale
. The now infamous blockchain scalability triad problem describes the need for a single-piece blockchain to compromise between security, throughput and decentralization. To improve one of these three components, sacrifices must be made in one or more of the other components.
Attachment: Blockchain Scalability Trilemma Link https://medium.com/certik/the-blockchain-trilemma-decentralized-scalable-and-secure-e9d8c41a87b3)
Most overall monolithic blockchains position themselves in groups A, B or C
thus sacrificing one of three core aspects
Many existing blockchains promise high throughput. However, to achieve this, they often make unacceptable sacrifices when it comes to decentralization.
In today's monolithic blockchain system, the increase in throughput is related to the increase in the cost of the verification chain. As blocks become larger or more frequent, the resource requirement to verify the effectiveness of blocks and/or blockchains is also increasing. Therefore, fewer and fewer users can verify the chain, and have to rely on an increasingly concentrated group of trusted third parties to run nodes. What you need to note in
is that sacrificing decentralization to increase throughput is not scaling.
Although the term “scalability” is often used to refer to the ability of blockchains to process transactions, there is a movement to redefine scalability as the throughput of a blockchain divided by the cost of the verification chain.
"Scalability" can be defined as the throughput of the blockchain divided by the cost of verifying all transactions (Source: Celestia)
According to this definition, in order to scale up, the blockchain must increase its throughput without increasing the cost of network verification. This "real scalability" is exactly what modular blockchain is designed to achieve.
4, the current monolithic L1 and L2 expansion solutions are not enough to achieve true scalability
There are many scaling solutions for monolithic blockchains, some of which are already under development. Solutions such as sharding, aggregation, fraud/proof of effectiveness and light client innovation are designed to increase throughput without increasing the cost of validating the network.
Some of these solutions adopt some aspects of modularity in order to scale, such as outsourcing execution to L2. However, L2 is severely limited by the main network performance, so as long as they continue to rely on monolithic L1 to complete, the trivial problem of scalability still exists.
For example, the summary on Ethereum directly publishes their blocks to the Ethereum blockchain, basically using L1 Ethereum as the settlement, consensus and data availability layer. The problem with this is that Ethereum is already crowded and the cluster is competing for bandwidth with users of "mono-chip Ethereum" (i.e. non-cluster use cases).
As they become more popular, rollups create further congestion on Ethereum, inadvertently pushing Ethereum towards a more modular priority design. For example, there have been several suggestions to reduce gas costs on Ethereum (i.e., to prioritize modularity), but this move is controversial because it will make typical Ethereum transactions more expensive, essentially forcing L1 Ethereum users to subsidize rollups transactions. The Rollups transactions on
on Ethereum must compete for space with monolithic Ethereum’s non-rollup use cases, and modular-first blockchains can avoid this problem (original source)
on Ethereum’s modular and monolithic use cases mean it cannot effectively optimize modularity. As long as it remains unspecialized, it will shrink compared to modularly preferred alternatives.The true scalability of
- i.e., large-scale increase in throughput and retain decentralization - is not a feasible goal of a monolithic blockchain. To scale up, chains like Ethereum will need to be optimized for modularity, which will mean full outsourcing execution.
Prospects of modular blockchain
New modular blockchain system is designed from scratch to solve barriers to scalability. Its purpose is not to build on outdated technologies, but to learn from the suboptimal elements of previous generations of blockchain technology , creates a completely new model that optimizes scalability and decentralization while maintaining security.
In a modular system, the protocol can specifically serve specific layers in the stack. With teams like Celestia working on dedicated data availability and consensus layers, new push for projects that optimize bottlenecks in the execution layer. Fuel is solving this challenge by building the world's fastest execution layer for a modular stack.
is not limited by Ethereum and EVM. Fuel handles scalable execution from a modular priority perspective, allowing significant improvements to the inefficient execution environment of EVM, thereby achieving maximum decentralization and maximum flexible throughput.
Through this new movement, we have the opportunity to start over and fundamentally build a new generation of blockchains, and goes beyond monolithic blockchains.
Editor in charge: Kate
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