Scalability is one of the main concerns of the Ethereum blockchain. The current limitations in capacity and speed faced by this network prevent it from being adopted at scale globally.

Ethereum Plasma was proposed by Vitalik Buterin along with Joseph Poon, co-founders of Ethereum. This concept was born in August 2017 as a technical scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. Along with Thaddeus Dryja, Joseph Poon is also responsible for the Lightning Network concept, a scaling solution proposed for Bitcoin in 2015. Although Plasma and Lightning Network were both proposed as scaling solutions for blockchain, Each mechanism has its own mechanism and characteristics.

This article will briefly introduce Ethereum Plasma, but remember that Plasma is not just a project, it is an off-chain scaling technique (also known as off-chain scaling), which can may be carried out in separate ways by different research groups or companies.

How does plasma work?

The main idea of ​​Ethereum Plasma is to establish a fabric of branch chains that will communicate and interact with the main chain (in this case, the Ethereum blockchain). Such a structure is designed to function as a blockchain tree, arranged hierarchically in a branching manner in which many smaller chains are linked to a root chain. These smaller chains are called Plasma chains or sub chains.

The Plasma architecture is built on the application of smart contracts and Merkle trees, allowing for the creation of countless child chains - essentially smaller copies of the original Ethereum blockchain. From the top of each substring, many smaller substrings can be created, thus forming a tree structure.

Essentially, each Plasma child chain is a customizable smart contract that can be designed to work in a particular way to serve different needs. This means that chains can coexist and operate independently. Businesses and companies can use it to implement scalable solutions in a variety of ways, depending on their specific context and needs.

Therefore, if Plasma is successfully developed and deployed to the Ethereum network, the parent chain will be less likely to be congested because each child chain will be designed to work in a unique way towards its goals. specific - not necessarily related to the main thread's goals. As a result, child chains help reduce the work of the main chain.

Evidence of fraud

Communication between child chains and the parent chain is secured by fraud proof, so the parent chain is responsible for keeping the network secure and punishing malicious actors.

Each child chain has its own mechanism for validating blocks and has its own proof-of-fraud implementation, which can be built on top of different consensus algorithms. The most popular are Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, and Proof of Authority.

Fraud proof ensures that in case of malicious activity, users can report dishonest nodes, protect their funds, and exit the transaction (this includes interacting with the main chain) . In turn, proof of fraud is used as a mechanism through which a Plasma child chain sends a claim to its parent chain or to the root chain.

MapReduce

Plasma's white paper also presents a very interesting application called MapReduce computing. Basically, MapReduce is a set of functions that are very useful in organizing and calculating data across multiple databases.

In the context of Plasma, these databases are blockchains, and the tree structure of chains allows MapReduce to be applied as a way to support the verification of data in the tree, significantly increasing the efficiency of the network.

Mass Exit incident

One of Plasma's main concerns is Mass Exit. This issue describes a scenario in which multiple users exit the Plasma chain at the same time, causing an overflow of the parent chain and massive network congestion. This issue can be triggered by fraudulent activity, cyberattacks, or any other type of serious error that a Plasma child chain, or group of chains, may have.

Conclude

Plasma is, essentially, an off-blockchain scaling solution that significantly increases the overall performance of the Ethereum network by creating a tree structure of many smaller chains. These chains will reduce the work of the main chain, thereby helping to process more transactions per second.

A decentralized model of linked blockchains like Plasma has great potential and is currently being tested by many research groups. If developed properly, Plasma could increase the efficiency of the Ethereum blockchain and provide a better framework for deploying decentralized applications. Furthermore, this idea can also be adapted and implemented by other cryptocurrency networks as a way to avoid scalability issues in the future.

Ethereum Plasma is an open source project with a public repository that can be found on GitHub. In addition to Ethereum, there are many other cryptocurrencies and source code repositories on GitHub currently working with Plasma, such as OmiseGO, Loom Network and FourthStateLabs. For more detailed and technical information, you can refer to the official Plasma white paper or go to the LearnPlasma website.

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