ArcBlock is known as the blockchain 3.0 project. The main reason is to build a network layer with improved performance, user-friendly and cross-chain data exchange based on the current public chain, so as to improve the underlying construction of blockchain.
As we all know, the performance of blockchain public chain is relatively weak at present, which is still far from enough for the deployment of commercial applications. At the same time, the current public chain for developers, each use of the public chain is charged; Too many new concepts lead to low user friendliness for users. In addition, the DAPP carried by each public chain cannot be connected with each other, so the data cannot cross the chain. It is such a requirement that ArcBlcok hopes to build a layer 2 network to solve these problems.
Technical Solutions
The ArcBlcok platform addresses these issues through innovative and revolutionary design, offering a complete solution that combines blockchain and cloud computing technologies. ArcBlock also uses the token economy mechanism to drive the internal roles to make joint efforts, thus forming a complete ecological system.
In terms of architecture, ArcBlock is a layer 2 network, which abstracts another layer on ETH, BTC, EOS and other basic public chains, forming a protocol layer that can provide multi-chain access, performance improvement and Internet access experience. Cross-chain is achieved by linking multiple blockchain public chains through the Open Chain Access Protocol. And use the high-level protocol provided by “cornerstone program” (Blocklet) to achieve any language development and provide performance due to virtual machine.
Screenshot from: ArcBlock high-level summary architecture diagram
Open Chain Access Protocol (OCAP)
Corresponds to the Open Chain Access Layer in the structure Layer. This layer protocol is used to access the abstract interface of the underlying public chain. Using the open chain access protocol, data can be exchanged with the underlying public chain. Therefore, at this level, open agreement proxy can be used to complete cross-chain access and open up data islands.
Cornerstone program (Blocklet)
The cornerstone program, called Blcoklet in the image above, has two layers, accounts and contracts. A cornerstone application is a high-level protocol that interacts with the Open Chain Access Protocol (OCAP) at the bottom and services and distributed applications at the top. The cornerstone program is also a high-performance public chain in essence, using algorand-based consensus algorithm, and can bridge the data between the chain and the chain by interacting with the data below the chain. High performance blocklets can be used to call different underlying public chains, and provide Internet level development and use experience, lowering the barriers to use.
In terms of simple
Simply put, ArcBlock builds a token economy mechanism and drives the role in the ecology through this incentive mechanism. The service it provides is actually an intermediate protocol layer between the bottom public chain and the upper Dapp. By lowering the development threshold and usage threshold, it increases the user volume and traffic of the ecosystem, and stimulates developers to focus on the application scenario.
Code progress
Look at the ArcBlock code. We use the open source Github to check the current development status: Github of ArcBlock project
If we click on the recently updated forge js repository, we can see the update frequency:
As can be seen from the screenshot, the update frequency is normal. Since the update in the first week of January, 19, the basic weekly average iteration was more than 20 times and the highest reached 80 times. This is a relatively normal situation. And this is just one code base, there are several more being updated, such as forger-React-Starter, forger-Elixir-SDK, etc.
While observing code updates:
It can be seen that the amount of code iterated every week is also quite large. The number of code added and deleted every week reaches more than 20K and the maximum number reaches 100K lines.
As a result, the actual technology development is still operating robustly, and the frequency and volume of updates are at a good level.
conclusion
Overall, ArcBlock is a project positioned in the future. By building an intermediate layer between the bottom public chain and the Dapp layer, it not only realizes the corresponding functions of cross-chain and predictor, but also is committed to reducing the development threshold and the difficulty for consumers to use, which is worthy of affirmation. However, the author is relatively concerned about the difficulty of this implementation is still very large, the whole two-layer network to build such a complete ecology, in fact, it is very difficult. In terms of direction, it is still uncertain whether the blockchain service layer will be a whole set of integrated solutions similar to ArcBlcok, or only cross-chain forms such as Boca and Cosmos. After all, to unify the rivers and lakes, there are various factions involved in the interests of the struggle, can think of the great difficulty.