The development of Web3 applications is entering a stage of explosive growth, with numerous application projects emerging across major tracks. Meanwhile, the public chain track is also steadily growing. According to Coingecko data, there are currently over 7,000 recorded L1 and L2 projects, including L1s focused on infrastructure and many application chains focused on business. The development of public chains is no longer limited to the infrastructure level, with more public chains aimed at application finance, gaming, and social networking already taking shape.
However, public chain development is a complex and challenging task. As the underlying public chain serves as the infrastructure of Web3, it needs to address multiple issues such as decentralization, security, and efficiency. On the application layer, public chains also face numerous problems related to smart contracts, virtual machines, data storage, and on-chain governance. This poses significant challenges to the team's development capabilities, business experience, and logical implementation. So, what methods can be employed to quickly and simply construct a blockchain?
1. Challenges faced in public chain development
Design and implementation of consensus mechanisms
The security of public chains is mainly ensured by consensus mechanisms, such as the PoW consensus mechanism of the Bitcoin network, which allows global nodes to participate in the maintenance of the network. To attack the network, one would need to control 51% of the computing power, which is nearly impossible to achieve, making Bitcoin one of the most secure networks.
However, most public chains do not have strong consensus and nodes, so balancing security and decentralization is a challenge. Currently, PoS and DPoS are also good choices for consensus mechanisms. Some advanced consensus algorithms (such as HotStuff or Tendermint) have a high technical threshold for implementation.
Scalability issues
The scalability of the network is the most critical issue that the next generation of public chains should consider, as it relates to the efficiency of application operation and user costs. The leading application public chain Ethereum is limited by scalability issues, leading to network congestion and high transaction costs, resulting in significant user loss over time, with many protocols being abandoned, such as the leading DEX Uniswap.
Solving scalability issues, ensuring high TPS for the network, improving throughput while achieving rapid block generation and quick transaction responses, and ensuring low confirmation times and network stability are critical. Currently, most mainstream public chains can complete transactions within 10 seconds, which is crucial for user experience.
Development of smart contract platforms
Developing efficient and stable virtual machines and ensuring comprehensive support for contract execution is crucial for the application layer. The mainstream virtual machines currently include EVM and Move VM. The EVM is the Ethereum virtual machine, and being EVM-compatible essentially means compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem. Due to the popularity of EVM, a large amount of development documentation, tutorials, and templates already exist, resulting in lower learning costs for developers and a well-developed toolchain. The Move VM, on the other hand, is built using the Move language, which incorporates the concept of 'resource safety' from its design, avoiding many vulnerabilities found in traditional smart contracts and providing stronger security.
Furthermore, tools and mechanisms should be provided to prevent vulnerabilities in smart contract development, such as reentrancy attacks and overflow issues. Designing easy-to-use and secure contract programming languages, like Solidity and Move, requires extensive development and testing.
In addition, network and storage architecture, development tools and infrastructure, network security, and continuous upgrade mechanisms are also areas that public chain development needs to pay attention to.
2. How to develop a public chain easily and quickly
In fact, as blockchain technology has developed, many frameworks have emerged that can be directly used to build public chains. Developers can use these frameworks to quickly and easily construct a public chain without starting from scratch. Furthermore, these technologies are quite mature, and their security and stability have been validated. Below is an explanation of the StarStack and Cosmos SDK development frameworks.
Cosmos
Cosmos focuses on application chain development, simply put, it enables simple and rapid development of public chains through the Tendermint consensus engine and Cosmos SDK. Then, through the IBC cross-chain communication protocol, it enables communication and interconnection between chains with the same structure.
When building a blockchain based on Cosmos, the main tool used is the Cosmos SDK, which is a development toolkit that allows developers to build blockchains using the Tendermint consensus algorithm. The SDK reduces complexity by providing the most common features included in blockchains, such as staking, management, and tokens.
Advantages of Cosmos chain:
Sovereignty and flexibility: Cosmos's free SDK allows developers to build sovereign blockchain applications, consuming ongoing costs.
Highly scalable: In terms of vertical scalability, Cosmos achieves thousands of transactions per second with Tendermint BFT and vertical scalability.
Ecological development environment: The Cosmos SDK simplifies the development process of blockchain applications, allowing developers to create custom chains on the SDK, promoting the adoption and growth of the blockchain ecosystem.
Plug-and-play and customizable consensus layer: Rollkit and Celestia can be used as your consensus and data availability layers.
Starcoin StarStack
Starcoin focuses on high-performance, customizable Layer 1 blockchain one-click smart deployment solutions, allowing developers to use StarStack for independent blockchain development. StarStack is a new development framework for the Move ecosystem and the only blockchain development framework in the Move ecosystem. It features a modular open-source code library for building customized Layer 1, enabling developers to launch the Move virtual machine and run their own blockchains. In the future, it may also utilize its AI intelligent system for blockchain deployment in a conversational form.
Compared to Cosmos, StarStack provides sufficient flexibility and customizable components, allowing developers to freely choose in areas such as consensus algorithms, virtual machines, cryptographic protocols, on-chain governance, transaction management, and gas modules.
The technical framework and advantages of StarStack lie in:
1) Built on Move language and virtual machine. The underlying framework and smart contracts of StarStack are written in Move language, and the virtual machine also uses Move. Object-oriented and asset-based programming enables high transparency of resources within modules, while external calls to modules remain completely opaque. The Move language is also known as the most secure and flexible smart contract language, which provides more space for its one-click chain issuance solutions when customizing Layer 1.
2) Based on DAG structure. StarStack introduces a DAG structure and innovatively launches FlexiDAG, upgrading the PoW consensus mechanism and dynamically adjusting block time, difficulty, and block rewards. The FlexiDAG accelerates block generation speed and shortens transaction confirmation times, significantly enhancing network performance and system efficiency. Additionally, key parameters can be dynamically adjusted through on-chain governance mechanisms, making the system more adaptable and flexible.
3) Parallel high-performance networks. StarStack introduces TurboSTM, a high-performance multithreaded memory computing engine, fundamentally changing the execution method of smart contracts. TurboSTM utilizes multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and optimistic locking to achieve synchronized data reading and timely updates, significantly reducing execution bottlenecks and improving transaction throughput. This also results in a qualitative leap in network performance, with official test environment data showing that the maximum TPS can reach 130,000, which is already the ceiling for industry public chains.
4) Compatibility with mainstream applications in the Move ecosystem. Starcoin achieves comprehensive compatibility with Move ecosystem applications through the upgrade of Move V7, allowing developers to easily migrate and deploy their dApps without rewriting code. In simple terms, applications developed on Aptos can be easily migrated to the new Layer 1 issued by Starcoin without modifying the original code.
3. Summary
Now, the technology for launching chains has become very mature, and the difficulties previously faced in developing public chains have largely been resolved. Public chain development is no longer a complex and challenging task; building a blockchain using mature frameworks has become simple and efficient.
