Fundamental Insights
Dfinity has established an ambitious vision from the beginning of project planning to realize a decentralized universal blockchain computer, a world computer, to support current Internet applications and create brand new businesses. And it is designed to jump out of the computing paradigm of the smart contract platform represented by Ethernet at the beginning, with a brand new design of a Web 3.0 technology stack.
Consensus mechanism
Dfinity aims to minimize the development and operation and maintenance costs of Internet services, so that developers do not need to deal with complex components such as databases, firewalls, load balancing, etc., but only need to focus on business development and deploy directly to Dfinity without relying on any centralized servers. the biggest innovation of Dfinity lies in its secure, efficient and flexible consensus mechanism, which has There are four layers of consensus.
Dfinity supports open membership by providing a registration protocol that registers new clients with a locked-in equity deposit. There will be no privileged nodes in Dfinity. To participate in the network, any client must meet the minimum hardware requirements to register and pledge some Tokens as a deposit to ensure that each node is doing its job and to protect against witch attacks.
Layer 2: Random Number Beacons Random numbers are at the core of the Dfinity consensus algorithm, and random number beacons (Beacons) are fair verifiable random functions (VRFs) generated jointly by registered clients. each random output of a VRF is unpredictable and relies on a threshold signature scheme with uniqueness and non-interactivity. Dfinity’s consensus is Epoch-by-Epoch, where in each Epoch, the system selects a threshold group containing multiple nodes based on the random number of the previous Epoch. The nodes in the threshold group then send a special transaction to register the public key and create an identity for their threshold group, a process that also assigns each threshold group member a key specifically for creating a “shared signature”. The members of the current threshold group then use this key to sign the random numbers generated by the previous round of consensus and broadcast the results. When the system collects enough signatures, it aggregates the signatures into a single threshold signature, which is the random number generated by the current round of consensus. This method of random number generation is much more efficient than the PoW exhaustive computation method and can save a lot of computational resources. The cryptographic security of this scheme is based on BLS signatures, and Dfinity has a built-in BLS implementation that is specially optimized for this purpose.
Layer 3: Blockchain Layer Dfinity uses a “probabilistic slot protocol” in blockchain resolution, which ranks clients for each block height, determined by the impartial output of a random number of beacons for that block height, and then assigns weights to the block proponents according to their ranking levels. The block proposers are then assigned weights according to the proposer ranking so that blocks from clients at the top of the list (from the sorted clients) are given higher weights. Using this protocol also solves the blockchain forking problem by supporting a chain with the “heaviest” cumulative block weights for resolution, much like the traditional PoW chain based on the highest cumulative workload mechanism. The advantage of this mechanism is that, firstly, the ranking is available instantly, making it possible to have a predictable and constant block-out time. Second, there is always a client with the highest ranking, which allows for uniform network bandwidth utilization and can significantly reduce block-out times.
Layer 4: Notary Layer Dfinity’s “notary” is essentially a complex timestamp on the block that ensures that the packaged blocks are added to the chain in the current consensus round. The finality of a particular transaction implies a system-wide consensus that a particular transaction has been irreversibly executed. This process is executed according to the highest principle (of all block candidates submitted to the client for notarization, the client provides notarization only for the highest-ranked weight, which is also determined by a publicly verifiable algorithm driven by random number beacons), and no communication is required between threshold group members, which saves a significant amount of time. Dfinity deploys new blockchain notarization technology at its fourth layer to Accelerate the achievement of finality. Notarization is no consensus, and Dfinity is, therefore, able to achieve high speeds and very short block-out times. Notarization can be seen as optimistic consensus because usually, only one block is notarized. As long as the broadcast network is working properly, after two notarized confirmations plus a network traversal time, a transaction is finalized in Dfinity consensus.
Software Operating Environment
Dfinity applications are compiled into WebAssembly and run in an execution layer container, which can be executed locally when developed and on Internet computers once deployed to the main network. The source code is compiled into a WebAssembly module and deployed into a container (Canister) on the Internet computer, which includes the program and state, user interaction records, etc. The user invokes the program through the entry point interface, including query calls and update calls. dfinity is a supporter of the standard and the first blockchain project to join as a member of the WASM standards committee consisting of ARM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, embark, etc. The program on dfinity is ultimately compiled into the form of WASM bytecode and can therefore be browser directly. Because of this, any programming language that can be programmed into WASM bytecode can be used to develop applications on Dfinity. In addition, to better enhance the software development experience, the Dfinity team has developed a new programming language, Motoko, specifically designed to support the unique features of Internet computers and to provide a powerful programming environment.
Governance
Dfinity has also innovated in governance by introducing a system of voting units called “neurons” that together form a blockchain neural system. By setting neurons to automatically follow the voting choices of other neurons, neurons can make voting decisions almost completely programmatically. The owners of these followed neurons may be experts or community KOLs. neuron owners must lock Dfinity’s native Token in the neuron in order to vote, while still getting paid for their votes. This model is primarily designed to address the low participation rate in voting, a problem that has plagued other Token holders’ participation in voting schemes. Dfinity’s approach also potentially reduces the centralization of the system and weakens the control of individual nodes over the network.
Ecology
Ecology is a key measure for any public chain to increase its influence, and the Dfinity Foundation has announced an ecological incentive program for developers totaling CHF 200 million, equivalent to approximately $224 million. The program is designed to support the development of a new ecosystem of dapps and services on the open network. A key part of this will include non-dilutive financing in the form of developer grants. In addition, venture capital fund Beacon Fund is also investing in Dfinity’s startup ecosystem. dfinity’s ecosystem building follows in its early days, but has already attracted application development in multiple tracks in a short period of time, across DeFi, social, tools, infrastructure, NFT and other disciplines.
The infrastructure application Fleek makes it easy to create websites and applications on the open Internet. All of their products are built on underlying protocols that support Web3, such as Internet Computer, IPFS, Filecoin and Ethereum. it raised $4 million to build a product base layer that mimics the traditional web infrastructure needed for any application or website, such as hosting, storage, databases, authentication and serverless functionality. It also supports the Etherium Naming Service (ENS) and Handshake’s Decentralized Domain Name Service (HNS). Currently, there are 14,000 websites already running on Fleek.
Enso Finance, the leading DeFi project on Dfinity, is a decentralized exchange that raised $5 million in a private funding round in April of this year. The round was led by Polychain, Dfinity, Multicoin, Spartan, and several other companies.
Social applications on Dfinity are also richer, with Distrikt, a decentralized social media dubbed Open Linkedin; OpenChat, a benchmark for Whatsapp; CanCan, a decentralized video sharing app that is considered a pass-through version of TikTok; and Dfinity with custom governance features a version of Reddit — DSCVR, etc.
Latest Data
As of the time of this writing, some of the key data on the Dfinity mainnet is as follows.
Node machines: 187
Subnets: 19
CPU cores: 11220
Memory: 365.64T
NMS Proposals: 11006
Hosted Containers.
Users creating internet Identity amounted to 164.9K
Neuron accounts: 5363 (not including locked accounts)
Summary.
@FL The crypto world today has changed dramatically from the beginning of Bitcoin, from simple decentralized ledger technology to Turing-complete algorithmic systems, from plain single-chain networks to heterogeneous cross-chain worlds, from rudimentary smart contract applications to complex meta-universe spaces. The tentacles of blockchain have been extended from pure ledger storage to finance, games, depository, copyright, corroboration, logistics, and many other industries, and the bottlenecks of the computing paradigm of the block are gradually revealed: either low performance, closed ecology, or insufficient universality.
Dfinity has an ambitious vision and is highly forward-looking in designing a world computer that can better meet the needs of future Web 3.0 applications. With the stable operation of the main network, the continuous improvement of infrastructure and the emergence of ecological projects, the outline of Dfinity as a world computer has gradually become clear. At the same time, Dfinity is also an extremely complex project, and its mainnet launch plan has been postponed several times. Subsequent development has been influenced by the quality of engineering and the ability to continue to innovate. In any case, Dfinity is a pioneering project, an important attempt in the Web 3.0 era, and a challenge to the “world computer”. We will keep an eye on its subsequent development and what kind of new encryption application scenarios will emerge from it.
