If the blockchain wants to scale development, cross-chain is the inevitable choice
“If there is only one blockchain in the world, maybe there is no need to cross it;But what we have is not just a blockchain.”
In 2008, bitcoin, the first blockchain, was quietly born.By 2020, according to the statistics of CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency market website, there were more than 5,600 cryptocurrency blockchain systems (excluding the realization of alliance chain and private chain).There are more than 60,000 blockchain projects on Github, an open source community.”Ten thousand chain co-existence” makes cross-chain interoperability become a trend again, and it will build an interconnected global large-scale blockchain industry ecology by solving the interoperation of assets, data and services in different blockchain systems.
1. The concept of cross-chain
At present, the global academia and industry are studying the cross-chain interoperability of blockchain.From the perspective of technical dimension and application dimension, researchers give different definitions.
Technical dimension recognition: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) believes that cross-chain focuses on data sharing. “An interoperable blockchain architecture is composed of distinguishable blockchain systems.Each blockchain system represents a unique distributed data ledger, where atomic transactions may be performed across multiple heterogeneous blockchain systems, and data recorded in one blockchain can be accessed, validated, and referenced by another external transaction in a semantically compatible manner.” Australian Catholic University (ACU) believes that cross-chain emphasizes more on triggering and execution of functions. “Cross-chain interoperability is not about directly changing the state to another blockchain system;Instead, it triggers a set of features on another system that is expected to perform operations within its own network.
Application dimension cognition: Ethereum founder Vitalik believes that cross-chain is a specific application ability. “Blockchain interoperability mainly refers to the ability of asset transfer, payment or information exchange between two blockchains.”Researchers from The University of Lyon I (UCBL) in France believe that cross-chain applications are not limited to interblock chains.”There are three types of blockchain interoperability: interoperability between different blockchains, interoperability between decentralized applications (DAPPS) using the same blockchain, and interoperability between blockchains and other technologies (such as integration with enterprise systems).”
2. Cross-chain scenario
The application scenario of cross-chain technology mainly includes three aspects, namely, asset exchange and transfer, data sharing, and business collaboration.
(1) Asset swap and transfer
A large number of digital assets have been born in many public chain projects. How to trade and exchange different digital assets has always been an important application scenario of cross-chain technology.The exchange and transfer of assets include the exchange of public digital assets (common assets), the exchange or transfer of assets under the alliance chain or private chain after the assets under the digital chain.The assets under the chain here may include tangible assets like gold and oil, or intangible assets like securities and stocks.With the expansion of the blockchain application scenario and the rapid development of the alliance chain, the exchange of digital assets has been unable to meet people’s expectations of the blockchain technology.The emergence of the sovereign public chain represented by national digital currency and the commercial alliance chain represented by the chain on traditional assets has put forward a more detailed demand for the asset exchange in the cross-chain demand.
(2) Data sharing
The data herein includes the evidence data stored on the chain, such as the certificate on the chain of data operation, and the index data, original data and other retrieval data stored under the chain.Unlike the massive data that can be contained in the traditional data sharing system, the data stored in the blockchain system needs to be endorsed by the blockchain.However, due to the differences in data format, storage mode and endorsement mode of different blockchain systems, the depositary and credential data cannot be mutually recognized in different systems.
(3)Business collaboration
It refers to the realization of the sharing of business data, the interconnection of business logic and the complementation of business scope under the relevant business scenarios of different blockchain systems.With the continuous development of the alliance chain, the number of enterprise-level alliance chains bearing the same business capability is gradually increasing, and the business data, business logic and business scope under the same business scenario are separated in the blockchain of different value systems, so it is urgent to expand the business collaboration capability of different blockchains.
3. Trend of cross-chain
Cross-chain application scenario is single, and business collaboration is the target.Currently has completed the development or open source is the main asset swaps or transfer on cross chain solutions, but in the digital currency class system based on blockchain of complex logic interference by the underlying economic value model, in the tokens of the class blockchain system is difficult to meet the application requirements, lead to cross chain did not achieve large-scale promotion.In the future, the realization of data sharing and business collaboration between different chains will be the main target of cross-chain future application scenarios.
The technical route has not been unified, and integrated development is the trend.In the early stage of development, the emphasis of cross-chain technology practice is different.Some cross-chain projects (e.g. Cosmos) are more focused on cross-chain protocol development, while others (e.g. Polkadot) are more focused on trunk chain capability improvement.The difference in emphasis actually reflects the different cognition of cross-chain platform builders. It is an inevitable choice to fully integrate the two key elements of cross-chain system in the future to truly realize cross-chain intercommunication.
Technical challenge is the key to the delay of project development.Since the large-scale launch of cross-chain platform construction in 2016, preliminary progress has been made in the practice of a few platforms for asset exchange or transfer, and other specific application scenarios have not yet completed the release or open source of transactional cross-chain solutions.The future project competition point mainly lies in the implementation of transactional cross-chain capability.
This article was originally edited by ZB.
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