How Interoperability Fuels Blockchain Linking to the Internet Infrastructure？
The birth of IFTTT ten years ago significantly improved the interoperability of all Internet products and became a must-have tool for productivity professionals, so is there a need for such a super tool in blockchain systems as well?
Blockchain technology has gradually started to access the systems in the traditional world and gradually take advantage of its “trust-free” feature. The “interoperability” of blockchain and these systems depends largely on whether the underlying blockchain protocols are sufficiently “compatible”. For example, for bitcoin, which does not support smart contracts, Ethereum or other blockchain protocols are only one-way compatible with the bitcoin protocol, while in turn, the bitcoin protocol is not compatible with other blockchains, and perhaps there is no need for it.
But not all projects can become Bitcoin, and will they gain enough interoperability for other public chain projects after providing Turing-complete universal computing power? Probably not, and the cost of compatibility can be high. On this issue, Nervos sees their exploration of ‘Interoperability 2.0’ as a step closer, with infrastructure reuse as the core breakthrough.
As a very brief example, for most users in the cryptocurrency industry, MetaMask or other wallet portals are an almost mandatory tool. If another public chain or application requires users to download a new wallet tool, not only is the experience worse, but the security is not fully validated. But Nervos’ “Interoperability 2.0” would be able to reuse MetaMask as an infrastructure for that chain’s wallet portal.
To take a broader example, for most Internet users, mailboxes are a must-have tool. And with Nervos’ flexible cryptographic primitive support, it is possible to directly reuse this decades-tested infrastructure. This might then open up more usage scenarios and make cryptocurrencies more accessible to more Internet users.
So, compared to the decentralized financial applications that the Ethereum community is exploring, Nervos has chosen a different path, not focusing on opening new types of specific application scenarios on a large scale, but accessing those existing tools and portals through the characteristics of its own underlying technology, and putting its focus on interoperability.
Why is interoperability important?
In short, interoperability reflects the compatibility ability and cost between two systems. For systems with strong compatibility, it will be easier to access other systems and open more application scenarios.
In professional terms, interoperability is defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as the ability to exchange information between two or more systems or components and to use the information that has been exchanged.
A popular productivity tool called IFTTT is a product that significantly improves interoperability and glues together many Internet services. This tool is like a glue that integrates almost all platform-based service providers in it, reducing the cost for users to actively access different services.
IFTTT allows users to set up links in their mailboxes, RSS feeds, chat tools (like Slack), smart appliances, Twitter, and many other services, and mix to create their own special usage scenarios. For example, when a specific result is searched on Twitter, you can send the content to your mailbox, so there is a lot of room to play and imagine.
But if a platform does not have an open API (application program interface) and does not offer the possibility of interoperability, then IFTTT will not be accessible and cannot link and collaborate with other platforms. For example, WeChat is a relatively closed space, and the support of IFTTT for WeChat is relatively poor.
The same holds true for applying the above case to blockchain systems. Many tools may be able to reduce the cost of interoperability between different blockchain systems and may be able to bridge the gap between blockchain systems and traditional Internet systems, but if the underlying blockchain is not prepared in advance and the appropriate infrastructure is not provided, the development and use of these tools may be costly or just not available for interoperability.
Therefore, blockchain systems with sufficient interoperability set aside in advance will be able to subsequently access other systems or at a lower cost and explore more application scenarios.
Not only cross-chain but also more application scenarios
One might think that cross-chain is the only way blockchain systems embody interoperability, but there is much more. With the direction Nervos is currently exploring, it also includes at least the rich scalability that comes from flexible support for cryptographic primitives, and the ability to migrate applications.
For example, on Ethereum, the public-private key encryption algorithm it uses is ECDSA based on the elliptic curve secp256k1. Thus, for other public chains that do not use this one curve or encryption algorithm, they cannot take advantage of the public-private key system of Ethereum and use their already established application ecology (e.g. MetaMask).
But the flexible cryptographic primitive support provided by Nervos allows for later application development (PW Core) to be compatible with the Ethereum standard and access to its application ecosystem. The Portal Wallet team of the Nervos ecosystem is currently experimenting with these directions, and they have already made it possible to send and receive assets on the Nervos chain via Ethereum addresses that users have previously owned, which is based on MetaMask that most people already have, without having to download or learn something new.
According to the Portal Wallet team, “The strength of CKB is the cryptography, the ability to customize any cryptographic algorithm, so it can read the hash or signature algorithm of other chains. It’s hard for others to do this.” So whether it’s Polkadot, NEAR and other public chains, Portal Wallet can be compatible with another blockchain’s address based on this advantage to achieve infrastructure reuse.
The Nervos team has also created a demonstration DEX beta called Gliaswap, which is implemented on Nervos’ Layer 2 network. It does not require users to have a dedicated CKB wallet or create a CBK account to use the protocol, but simply to access it using a commonly used Ethereum or Tron wallet.
On the other hand, a feature Nervos calls Polyjuice, which is compatible with smart contracts from other chains, i.e. virtual machines running on the chain, will reduce the cost of application migration for developers. Polyjuice will support Ethereum first and then virtual machines from other chains later.
And about the performance of running on the chain, the Portal Wallet team said, “It would require very big changes for other chains to add a VM, and since the CKB VM is a CPU-level abstraction, it’s very smooth to run EVM on it, and EVM should be something for the application layer.”
Of course, cross-chain is certainly a fundamental capability, and Nervos’ solution is Force Bridge, which enables asset cross-chaining through “bi-directional” SPV (Simple Payment Verification) technology, meaning that both chains have built light nodes of the other chain that can verify each other’s blockheads.
Even the most important infrastructure for accessing the Internet: mail
In fact, the Internet itself has many infrastructures that use cryptography, and based on the advantages of “Interoperability 2.0”, it may be the entry point for Nervos to access the traditional Internet.
For example, the Internet infrastructure “mailbox” has now widely used the Domain Name Key Identification Mail (DKIM) mechanism, which provides the function of digital signature and identity verification to detect whether the sender, subject, inner text, attachment and other parts have been forged or tampered with.
DKIM is a protocol derived from the 2004 merger of two similar systems from Yahoo and Cisco, which became an official Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard in May 2007 and is supported by major email service providers such as Yahoo and Gmail.
Based on DKIM’s cryptographic signature algorithm, Portal Wallet’s proof-of-concept has enabled the transfer of CKB assets by sending an email, while ensuring that the process is secure, tamper-proof, and permissionless. After all, the advantage of DKIM itself is that it allows the sender to effectively identify himself, allowing the recipient to confirm with the public key that the sender is not a forger and that the content has not been tampered with, increasing the trustworthiness of the email.
Further, email is an important fundamental protocol in the development of the Internet, and many applications and other protocols can be based on email, such as online marketing, newsletters, calendar invitation management, as a source aggregator, etc.
With the addition of the IFTTT just mentioned, more interaction with other protocols can be achieved, resulting in more application interoperability. For example, when a user receives an email to receive a CKB asset, they can set it up to trigger an additional task: check their wallet balance, push or re-forward the email to send the asset to someone else, etc.
Nervos Nervos behind it
Another sense is that Nervos, in moving forward with interoperability, has put itself in a more underlying position without deliberately emphasizing that it is a blockchain network, but rather as a clearing and computing layer for front-end services that other projects can use it to build connections to the traditional Internet in a permissionless and decentralized way.
Portal Wallet echoes this sentiment, saying, “The Nervos approach is about being everywhere. So it’s positioned to be a hub where all assets can be settled across the chain and users can use the service directly.”
Perhaps in the future, when blockchain can be fully integrated and revolutionize the Internet facilities, it will be the same as how people look at HTTP or TCP/IP protocols now, where many people may not know exactly what it does, but it is an underlying protocol that is everywhere and cannot be bypassed.
Article from Pan Zhixiong
Translated by Yang(Mengyan Finance)