1.Substrate Chain: Supports chain-level innovation, but is difficult to develop and costly to tap. 2.EVM contracts: again limited by the expressive power and running efficiency of the primary Solidity language. 3.Wasm contract: Developed using high-level chain-level languages Rust or AS, it is cheap to deploy and run.
Substrate Chain development: hotbed of underlying technology innovation
If Substrate is used to develop an application and deployed as a parallel chain, such as DeFi, game, identity, etc., then the parallel chain is only a “product”, and any interaction with other products in the ecosystem needs to go through the cross-chain mechanism and undergo communication delays of multiple blocks.
Because parallel chains have no inherent allocation logic for in-chain resources, they are unable to quickly batch partners to dynamically deploy applications. In the current development of the Ethereum ecosystem, everyone has realized that based on various standards of blockchain, the ecosystem has exploded due to decentralized open collaboration and composability.
We still need the smart contract chain model, which can dynamically allocate resources through a gas-like resource model and accommodate millions of contract applications to form a platform effect. The interaction between contracts is carried out in real time within the block without delay. Therefore, the real value of Substrate does not lie in the development of specific business logic applications, but in the development of various platform technologies, such as privacy platform, EVM platform, Wasm platform, storage platform and other underlying technological innovations.
02 EVM vs Wasm
At present, EVM platform and Wasm platform are in the forefront. Ethereum’s underlying virtual machines and contract technology have barely changed since it went live five years ago, a temporary solution when the concept of smart contracts was still being invented. The Ethereum Foundation stated several times at Devcon its intention to transition from EVM to Wasm, but the sheer volume of contracts that have come online doesn’t support deep changes, and the ecosystem is getting too big to fail with this temporary solution.
Boca, including relay chain, parallel chain and on-chain contracts, are all built on Wasm, and this new contract technology system can be built from scratch. Substrate development and Wasm contract development have the same root and same origin, and are only different at the level of resource model.
Parallel chain projects will monopolize the resources of a slot, and if they do not contain contract functions, they will only be used exclusively by their own Runtime products, using a predetermined fixed fee model. If the parallel chain contains contract modules, the resources of the chain can be dynamically allocated to the upper contract according to the dynamic Gas billing model.
Developing Wasm smart contracts using high-level languages such as Rust or AssemblyScript supports more basic data types and complex data types than Solidity, and has much richer development library support. Wasm smart contracts allow developers to break the limitations of Solidity authoring and express business logic properly in a really decent high-level language, increasing product logic and complexity by an order of magnitude. Patract will write more tutorials on the technical details of Wasm and EVM, as well as several reports on performance differences between the two.
To take a simple example, THE EVM is like a gasoline car that has been optimized for years to the limit, even though it’s still mostly gasoline cars on the streets. Wasm is like an electric car, superior in principle to a gasoline car (no gearbox, high energy conversion, naturally intelligent), and there is still a lot of room for continuous optimization, albeit only in small volume production. But the market values of car companies already give us an early indication of which is the future. Right now many developers are relying on the EVM ecosystem like a gas station, but the future will reward those who innovate and get in early.
Past Wasm contract platform
Boca is not the first to announce support for Wasm contracts. There are a number of projects that have chosen to use Wasm technology to write smart contracts, including EOS and NEAR. Many people will criticize EOS for not being able to compete with EVM even though it has high performance, and conclude that Wasm is useless, EVM is superior, and even technology iteration is useless.
However, blockchain is only divided into two types, one is Bitcoin, which is maintained purely around the consensus of the currency. The technical model is extremely simple, and there is no room or need for iteration. The other is the rest of the chain, which can only be established by iterations of technology and product logic. The reason ethereum remains the largest blockchain ecosystem is because no project has surpassed Ethereum in all its aspects, not simply because subsequent projects have inferior contract technology.
Competition between chains is multi-dimensional, and EOS is the first project to use Wasm technology on a large scale while supporting table storage, which is progressive. However, other disadvantages of the whole project are too obvious, such as node centralization, poor experience of resource model, continuous DDoS attacks, and non-iteration of founding team, which lead to the decline of the whole chain, but do not represent the fault of Wasm contract. By virtue of Substrate’s underlying abstraction capability, Boca greatly improves the heterogeneity richness of chain technology and becomes a blockchain platform capable of generating cross-generational differences. Patract is focusing on Polkadot, a blockchain 3.0 platform, for smart contracts 2.0.
04 Wasm Contract Open platform Patract
Patract has prepared key components for the development of the Boca Wasm contract, including the test network Jupiter, the development and testing scaffolding Redspot, the debugging sandbox Europa, the node API service Elara, the multilingual SDK Himalia, Zero knowledge proof support for zkMega, DApp front end support for PatraStore, etc. Also under development are contract browser PatraScan, contract monitoring Leda, new contract framework Ask! Cloud IDE Carpo and other ancillary products.
We are working with multiple community parallel chains to promote the Wasm contract ecosystem and actively feedback to the Parity iterative contract model and INK! We believe that in the near future, the Wasm contract ecosystem will become complete and mature.
About Patract
Patract provides solutions for parallel chain and DApp development in boca’s Wasm contract ecosystem. We help the community design and develop on-chain contract module and Runtime support, and provide DApp developers with a full stack of tools and services covering the development, testing, debugging, deployment, monitoring, data provisioning, and front-end development phases.
How to join Patract
1. For contract developers, visit the official website (Patract.io) to familiarize yourself with the test chain and tool suite. Element (app.element. IO /#/room/#Pat… Discord (Discord. Gg/wJ8TnTfjcq)
2. For parallel chain projects that will integrate Wasm contract functions, or DApp projects developed using Wasm contract, please contact [email protected] for business cooperation
3. For users, welcome to join: Telegram (t.me/ Patract) Twitter (twitter.com/PatractLabs…
4. For job seekers, we are recruiting blockchain development engineer, front-end/full stack development engineer, developer operation and other positions, you can contact [email protected]