Modularity Is Transforming the Crypto Landscape | Opinion

CryptoNews · 2024-05-19T12:13:06.000Z

Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial. The first smart contract blockchain, Ethereum, was monolithic by design, meaning it manages its own execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability. Over the years, new decentralized applications developed, leading to increased demand for blockspace. When the demand for blockspace is more than its supply, the constrained availability restricts the range of potential applications, causing a significant impediment to utility and widespread adoption. You might also like: Decentralized payments is a gateway to economic development | Opinion This limitation is called the scalability trilemma or, in a nutshell, the idea that no public blockchain can simultaneously achieve maximum decentralization or security to achieve optimal scalability. To overcome the limitations of the scalability trilemma, modularity has emerged as a way of outsourcing core components optimized to solve critical functions. The courtesy of the Inco’s team The modular blockchain thesis centers on role specialization. It proposes decentralizing traditional blockchain functions—like execution or data availability—across specialized networks. By segmenting these functions from a singular L1 into distinct layers, blockchains can be tailored for optimal performance in specific areas, significantly boosting customization, efficiency, and, where necessary, decentralization, security, and scalability. Given the diverse range of use cases, these functions can be different. A modular network could be specialized to push oracle price feeds, provide zero-knowledge proving services, make available data, or enable a more scalable execution layer on top of another underlying blockchain. The need for modularity in the crypto industry Ethereum exemplifies the gradual transformation into a modular world. The chain was first launched with a monolithic design, following in the footsteps of Bitcoin. Arbitrum, a layer-2, represents the success story of rollups in separating the intensive computation needed for scalability off-chain while settling back on-chain. Many more projects have adopted this design thanks to the resource effectiveness and less costly design of processing transactions using rollups. It doesn’t stop there. Networks that help developers see and unlock the value of modularity have been on the rise. Celestia is a great example of solving an obvious problem: the significant cost of storing data availability (DA) back to Ethereum. While rollups allow for higher throughput, the cost of transacting is still relatively high because it ultimately depends on the storage cost of the settlement layer. A solution to this problem is to offer an alternative DA layer. The realization that a single monolithic design cannot meet today’s blockchain demands without a trade-off is why the space is moving towards modularity. Ethereum is the most secure blockchain with smart contracts but has continued to face various shortcomings with processing transactions and gas fees. The courtesy of the Inco’s team In addition to solving blockchain’s architectural challenges, it’s becoming clear that additional services are necessary for enabling new use cases and pushing for web3 adoption. Examples of such add-on services include oracle services, decentralized RPC, ZK prover networks, AI, to name a few. However, blockchains cannot support these services natively due to the additional overhead, hardware requirements, or technical incompatibilities. Given the composable nature of the modular architecture, blockchains don’t need to support everything themselves anymore—everything can be plug-and-play like legos. The courtesy of the Inco’s team As an example, one unsolved problem that this space will keep on tackling is around confidentiality. Most of the widely adopted blockchains today are transparent and cannot add on-chain confidentiality without requiring resource-intensive hardware for their validators when utilizing cryptography methodologies such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) or fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). Beyond the existing four blockchain layers (execution, settlement, data availability, and consensus), a confidentiality layer on top of existing dApps is a critical missing piece that will enable net new use cases that are not feasible on top of transparent blockchains. Inco is an example of a modular protocol that acts as the fifth layer—confidential computing—by introducing fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to Ethereum and other blockchains without changing the base protocol. Today, modular protocols are gaining traction, and with the widespread adoption of decentralization, they will likely become the standard for building in web3. This standard will undoubtedly disrupt the vertically integrated approach of monolithic chains and tap into specific Lego blocks that can be matched to create distinct modular stacks. This means projects will use the modules they need for their specific needs instead of trying to do everything. This will unlock infinite scalability because a network could depend on Ethereum for security, Move as the execution environment, Celestia for data availability, and Inco for confidential computing. The ultimate goal is for disparate ecosystem modules to coexist and grow together. The landscape of blockchain technology is poised for significant expansion with the advent of modular architectures in 2024 and beyond. These novel blockchains delegate at least one of the quintessential functions—settlement, consensus, confidentiality, data availability (DA), or execution—to another distinct blockchain framework. Read more: Trust, but verify (with better data): overcoming AI’s hallucination problem | Opinion Author: Remi Gai Remi Gai is the founder and CEO of Inco. He is a web3 founder fellow at South Park Commons, with a background in engineering (Google, Microsoft), entrepreneurship (founding member of Parallel Finance, a suite of defi protocols on Polkadot that reached over 500M in TVL backed by Polychain, Sequoia, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures), product management (web3 UX lead at co-founded blockchain studio), and venture capital (8 Decimal Capital). Now, he builds Inco, aiming to break down the final barrier to mass adoption of web3.

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第一個智能合約區塊鏈以太坊在設計上是單片的，這意味着它管理自己的執行、結算、共識和數據可用性。多年來，新的去中心化應用程序不斷髮展，導致對區塊空間的需求增加。當對區塊空間的需求超過其供應時，受限的可用性會限制潛在應用的範圍，從而嚴重阻礙其實用性和廣泛採用。
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這種限制被稱爲可擴展性三難困境，簡而言之，就是沒有一條公有區塊鏈能夠同時實現最大程度的去中心化或安全性以實現最佳可擴展性。爲了克服可擴展性三難困境的限制，模塊化已成爲一種外包核心組件的方法，這些組件經過優化以解決關鍵功能。
由 Inco 團隊提供
模塊化區塊鏈理論以角色專業化爲中心。它提議將傳統區塊鏈功能（如執行或數據可用性）分散到專門的網絡中。通過將這些功能從單一的 L1 劃分爲不同的層，區塊鏈可以根據特定領域的最佳性能進行定製，從而顯著提高定製化、效率，並在必要時提高去中心化、安全性和可擴展性。
鑑於用例的多樣性，這些功能可能會有所不同。模塊化網絡可以專門用於推送預言機價格信息、提供零知識證明服務、提供可用數據，或在另一個底層區塊鏈之上啓用更具可擴展性的執行層。
加密行業對模塊化的需求
以太坊體現了逐漸向模塊化世界轉變的過程。該鏈最初採用單體設計，追隨比特幣的腳步。第 2 層 Arbitrum 代表了 rollups 的成功故事，它將可擴展性所需的密集計算分離到鏈下，同時重新迴歸鏈上。由於使用 rollups 處理交易的資源效率和成本較低，更多項目採用了這種設計。
但這還不止於此。幫助開發人員發現和釋放模塊化價值的網絡一直在興起。Celestia 就是一個很好的例子，它解決了一個顯而易見的問題：將數據可用性 (DA) 存儲回以太坊的成本很高。雖然 rollups 可以實現更高的吞吐量，但交易成本仍然相對較高，因爲它最終取決於結算層的存儲成本。解決這個問題的一個方法是提供一個替代的 DA 層。
意識到單一的整體式設計無法滿足當今區塊鏈的需求，因此該領域正在向模塊化發展。以太坊是具有智能合約的最安全的區塊鏈，但在處理交易和 gas 費用方面仍面臨各種缺陷。
由 Inco 團隊提供
除了解決區塊鏈的架構挑戰之外，很明顯，額外的服務對於啓用新用例和推動 web3 的採用也是必要的。此類附加服務的示例包括 oracle 服務、去中心化 RPC、ZK 證明者網絡、AI 等等。然而，由於額外的開銷、硬件要求或技術不兼容，區塊鏈無法原生支持這些服務。鑑於模塊化架構的可組合性，區塊鏈不再需要自己支持一切——一切都可以像樂高積木一樣即插即用。
由 Inco 團隊提供
舉個例子，這個領域將繼續解決的一個未解決問題是保密性。當今，大多數被廣泛採用的區塊鏈都是透明的，並且在使用零知識證明（ZKP）或全同態加密（FHE）等加密方法時，如果不爲其驗證器提供資源密集型硬件，就無法增加鏈上保密性。
除了現有的四個區塊鏈層（執行、結算、數據可用性和共識）之外，現有 dApp 之上的機密層是一個關鍵的缺失部分，它將實現在透明區塊鏈之上不可行的全新用例。Inco 是一個模塊化協議的示例，它充當第五層——機密計算——通過在不改變基本協議的情況下將完全同態​​加密（FHE）引入以太坊和其他區塊鏈。
如今，模塊化協議越來越受到關注，隨着去中心化的廣泛採用，它們很可能成爲 web3 的構建標準。該標準無疑將顛覆單片鏈的垂直整合方法，並利用可匹配的特定樂高積木來創建不同的模塊化堆棧。這意味着項目將根據其特定需求使用所需的模塊，而不是試圖做所有事情。
這將釋放無限的可擴展性，因爲網絡可以依賴以太坊來確保安全性，依賴 Move 作爲執行環境，依賴 Celestia 來確保數據可用性，依賴 Inco 來確保機密計算。最終目標是讓不同的生態系統模塊共存並共同成長。
隨着 2024 年及以後模塊化架構的出現，區塊鏈技術的格局將迎來重大擴展。這些新型區塊鏈將至少一項典型功能（結算、共識、機密性、數據可用性 (DA) 或執行）委託給另一個不同的區塊鏈框架。
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作者：雷米·蓋
Remi Gai 是 Inco 的創始人兼首席執行官。他是 South Park Commons 的 web3 創始人研究員，擁有工程背景（谷歌、微軟）、創業背景（Parallel Finance 的創始成員，Parallel Finance 是 Polkadot 上的一套 defi 協議，其 TVL 超過 5 億，由 Polychain、Sequoia、Founders Fund、Coinbase Ventures 支持）、產品管理背景（共同創辦區塊鏈工作室的 web3 UX 主管）和風險投資背景（8 Decimal Capital）。現在，他創立了 Inco，旨在打破大規模採用 web3 的最後障礙。

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