Following the release of L2 Soneium by electronics giant Sony on OP, on October 29, re-staking protocol giant Swell announced its migration to the Optimism superchain and joined the OP ecosystem by building a Rollup through the OP Stack. According to DeFilama data, Swell's TVL once exceeded US$3 billion and is currently US$1.34 billion. Swell's joining will provide re-staking income and security support for the OP superchain.
At the same time, with the addition of Swell, the number of OP super chain ecological projects has reached 59, including super brands such as Sony, Coinbase, Uniswap, Worldcoin, Kraken, Fraxtal, etc., which has set off a chain issuance craze for a while. Discussions on hot words such as one-click chain issuance, application chain, modularization, etc. have also aroused thousands of waves.
In fact, before the OP superchain became popular, there were actually many projects that were doing chain issuance, such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Starcoin, etc. Different projects have their own focus. Polkadot focuses on the construction of the parachain ecosystem, Cosmos is mainly oriented to the application chain, and Starcoin is an independent public chain for the Move ecosystem. The OP chain issuance craze may drive other chain issuance platforms to regain more market attention. Next, let's analyze the characteristics of these chain issuance platforms to see which one has greater potential.
1. Polka Dots
Polkadot is a blockchain network protocol that provides shared security for all connected parachains and allows all connected tasks to interoperate using XCM.
Polkadot uses a relay chain plus a parachain approach in terms of architecture. The relay chain is a zero-layer protocol responsible for maintaining the consensus of each parachain, confirming the finality of each block, and the governance of the entire Polkadot. It is like the system of the government hall, connecting various departments (parallel chains), each department is responsible for recording and handling business, and the final review and confirmation work is handed over to the government hall.
Parallel chains are blockchains built on the Polkadot SDK. Each parachain has its own parameters, such as block time, transaction fees, governance mechanisms, and mining rewards. Parallel chains are independent and equal blockchain ecosystems. Unlike general blockchains, the confirmation of blocks and the governance of the ecosystem are all done by the relay chain. Using the government hall as an analogy, parachains are departments. They all have their own functions, but they don’t need to have a separate system for each department. They can just use the government hall system (the relay chain ensures the consensus of each parachain), but this system is decentralized.
Among them, Substrate is a scalable, modular, open-source blockchain framework used by Polkadot to build parallel chains. It implements most of the common functions encountered in blockchain development, such as p2p networks, consensus algorithms, common encryption algorithms, data storage, transaction management, etc.
Substrate has many advantages:
Modularity: Substrate allows developers to easily create, combine and publish components to form business logic by providing an open SDK and practical components that can be combined, reused and published.
Multi-layer architecture: The three-layer structure of Substrate is Substrate Core, Substrate SRML and Substrate Node. Substrate Core is a module for building the minimum framework of blockchain, which can provide modules such as storage, consensus, transaction queue and block production mechanism and low-level JavaScript utilities; the SRML layer is simpler, and developers only need to select the group they need from the module to set the parameters; Substrate Node only needs to provide a JSON configuration file to obtain a complete smart contract blockchain.
Non-fork upgrade: Substrate supports non-fork Runtime upgrade. The Substrate-based chain stores WebAssembly Blob or WASM Blob, which contains all the logic required for the chain to build a new block. The chain's own Runtime is contained in this WASM Blob. If the relevant information of the blockchain needs to be modified, it only needs to be combined with the on-chain governance referendum. If the votes are passed, the corresponding upgrade can be completed, thereby reducing the impact of hard forks.
However, since Polkadot ecosystem investment institutions pay more attention to short-term returns, long-term coin holders have suffered heavy losses, the current ecosystem development activity has been greatly reduced. In addition, due to the limited number of parachains, the cost of bidding for slots is too high, which has also discouraged many new developers.
2. Cosmos
Cosmos focuses on application chain development. In simple terms, it uses the Tendermint consensus engine and Cosmos SDK to achieve simple and rapid development of public chains. Then, through the IBC cross-chain communication protocol, it realizes communication and interconnection between chains under the same structure.
Compared with Polkadot, the Cosmos ecosystem is quite comprehensive. According to Coingekco statistics, there are 162 Cosmos ecosystem projects, and among the top 100 projects by market value, 12 are from the Cosmos ecosystem, such as Celestia, Injective, and Sei, which were popular some time ago, all from Cosmos, and Luna, which previously had a market value of over 10 billion.
When building a Cosmos-based blockchain, the Cosmos SDK is the main tool used, which is a development toolkit that allows developers to build blockchains using the Tendermint solicitation algorithm. The SDK reduces complexity by providing the most common functions included in blockchains, such as staking, management, and tokens.
Advantages of the Cosmos chain:
Sovereignty and Flexibility: Cosmos’s free SDK enables developers to build sovereign blockchain applications with no ongoing costs.
Highly scalable: In terms of vertical scalability, Cosmos achieves the ability to process thousands of transactions using Tendermint BFT and vertical scalability.
Ecological development environment: Cosmos SDK simplifies the development process of blockchain applications. Developers can create custom chains on the SDK to promote the adoption and growth of the blockchain ecosystem.
Plug and play and customize the consensus layer. You can use Rollkit and Celestia as your consensus and data availability layer.
But the disadvantages are:
Cross-chain security (ICS): The introduction of the concept of ICS (inter-blockchain communication security) has increased the burden on application developers to a certain extent. Developers now need to independently manage the validator set and economic security of the application chain, which is difficult for developers who are not very familiar with dealing with blockchain and security.
Complexity of Liquidity Staking: Stakers may face more risk from DeFi activities as their stake may now earn returns through DeFi activities.
The performance bottleneck is obvious: As an application chain, it needs to carry millions of transactions, and the current performance is obviously not satisfactory.
3. Starcoin
Starcoin focuses on high-performance, customizable Layer1 blockchain one-click intelligent deployment solutions. Developers can use StarStack to develop independent blockchains. StarStack is an open source code library with modularity as its core, which is used to build customized Layer1. Developers can use this code library to start the Move virtual machine and run their own blockchain. In the future, they can also use its AI intelligent system to deploy blockchains in the form of dialogue.
Unlike Polkadot and Cosmos, Starcoin focuses on the development of independent blockchains. Simply put, it provides sufficient flexibility and customizable components, allowing developers to freely choose consensus algorithms, virtual machines, encryption protocols, on-chain governance, transaction management, gas modules, etc.
StarStack technical framework and advantages are:
1) Built on Move language and virtual machine. StarStack's underlying framework and smart contracts are written in Move language, and the virtual machine also uses Move. Object-oriented and asset-based programming makes resources in the module highly transparent, while external calls to the module are completely opaque. Move language is also known as the most secure and flexible smart contract language, which also provides more space for its one-click chain launch solution when customizing Layer1.
2) Based on DAG structure. StarStack introduced the DAG structure and launched FlexiDAG in combination with its own innovation, which upgraded the PoW consensus mechanism and dynamically adjusted the block time, difficulty and block reward. FlexiDAG will speed up the block generation, shorten the transaction confirmation time, and greatly improve the network performance and system efficiency. In addition, key parameters can be dynamically adjusted through the on-chain governance mechanism, making the system more adaptable and flexible.
3) Parallel high-performance network. In StarStack, TurboSTM, a high-performance multi-threaded memory computing engine, was introduced, which completely changed the way smart contracts are executed. TurboSTM uses multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) and optimistic locking to achieve synchronous data reading and timely updates, greatly reducing execution bottlenecks and improving transaction throughput. This also makes the network performance have a qualitative leap. According to the official test environment data, the highest TPS can reach 130,000, which is already the ceiling of the industry's public chain.
4) Compatible with mainstream applications in the Move ecosystem. Recently, Starcoin has achieved full compatibility with applications in the Move ecosystem through the upgrade of Move V7, allowing developers to easily migrate and deploy their dApps without rewriting the code. In short, Layer1 issued by Starcoin is compatible with most applications in the Move ecosystem. For example, applications developed on Aptos can be easily migrated to the new Layer1 without modifying the original code. Of course, this also applies to blockchains developed using StarStack, so this provides great convenience for developers who want to deploy the Move ecosystem.
Currently, Starcoin is relatively lacking in chain ecology, with few ecological applications and no extensive market verification. However, the StarStack framework has just been released, and many developers should try it. For developers who want to independently develop public chains and highly customized ones, Starcoin has its unique advantages.
