Full Stack Parallelization: Release of the White Paper for the New EVM Layer1 Project

Recently, an emerging parallel EVM Layer 1 project released a White Paper titled "Full Stack Parallelization," aiming to comprehensively enhance the scalability of blockchain and provide "predictable performance" for decentralized applications (DApps).

Predictable performance refers to providing DApps with a predictable transaction throughput of ( TPS ), which is crucial for certain business scenarios. DApps deployed on public chains often need to compete for computing resources and storage space with other applications. During network congestion, this can lead to higher transaction costs and delays, severely restricting the development of DApps. Imagine if users of decentralized instant messaging software are unable to send and receive messages in a timely manner due to underlying network congestion; this would be disastrous for user experience.

To address the "predictable performance" issue, a common approach is to use blockchains dedicated to specific applications, known as application chains. An application chain is a blockchain that allocates block space specifically for a particular application.

This new project innovatively proposes the solution of "Elastic Block Space" ( Elastic Block Space, EBS ). Based on the concept of elastic computing, it dynamically adjusts block resources at the protocol level according to DApp needs, providing independent scaling block space for high-demand DApps.

This article will introduce application chains and elastic block space, and compare the advantages and disadvantages of both.

The Development History of Application Chains

Application chains are blockchains created for running a single DApp. Developers do not build on existing blockchains but instead construct a new blockchain from scratch using a custom virtual machine to execute transactions between users and applications. Developers can also customize different elements of the network stack, such as consensus, networking, and execution, to meet specific design requirements, thereby addressing issues like high congestion, high costs, and fixed features on shared networks.

The application chain is not a new concept: Bitcoin can be regarded as an "application chain" for "digital gold", Arweave can be seen as an application chain for permanent storage, and a certain data availability project can be viewed as an application chain that provides data availability.

Since 2016, application chains not only include single blockchains but also multi-chain forms, which are ecosystems built by multiple interconnected blockchains. The main representatives are a certain cross-chain project and a certain Web3 infrastructure project. The former is committed to solving the cross-chain interaction problem, allowing for the rapid development and launch of a chain, and has designed a cross-chain communication protocol; the latter aims to be the perfect blockchain scaling solution, with the chains in its ecosystem referred to as parallel chains, which advocate shared security from the very beginning.

At the end of 2020, as Ethereum's scalability research focused on solutions such as sidechains, subnets, and Layer 2 Rollups, application chains also evolved into corresponding forms. Certain sidechain solutions like a Polygon project and the subnet of a high-performance public chain have improved the overall service capability by enhancing the experience and performance of sidechains or subnets. Layer 2 Rollups support application chains in a modular stack format, and certain open-source tech stacks and development toolkits from a Polygon project have been favored by many projects. The Layer 2 Rollups solutions aim to increase the throughput and scalability of the Ethereum network, meet the growing transaction demand, and provide broader interoperability.

Currently, a large number of applications are built on cross-platform application chains. For example, a certain NFT game launched an Ethereum sidechain in early 2021; a certain gaming project announced migration from a public chain to a high-performance public chain subnet at the end of 2021; a certain decentralized exchange launched a DeFi application chain built using a certain cross-chain project SDK in November 2021; another decentralized exchange announced that product version V4 will use technology from a certain cross-chain project SDK to build an independent application chain in mid-2022; a certain Web3 infrastructure project launched an infrastructure application chain in 2023 to serve the development of Web3 ecosystem applications, which also includes a rich commercial protocol layer.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Application Chains

The application chain gains full control over the operating sovereign blockchain without relying on the underlying Layer 1, which is a double-edged sword.

There are three main advantages:

1. Sovereignty: The application chain can solve problems through its own governance solutions, maintaining independence and autonomy, and preventing various interferences;

2. Performance: Meet the low latency and high throughput required by applications, provide a good user experience, and improve the actual operation efficiency of DApps.

3. Customizability: Developers can customize the chain according to their needs and even create ecosystems, providing a flexible way of evolution.

There are also three disadvantages:

1. Security Issues: Application chains need to be responsible for their own security, including weighing the number of nodes, maintaining consensus mechanisms, mitigating staking risks, etc. The network is relatively insecure;

2. Cross-chain issues: As an independent chain, it lacks interoperability with other chains ( applications ), facing cross-chain challenges. Integrating cross-chain protocols will also increase risks;

3. Cost Issues: A large amount of infrastructure needs to be built, consuming significant costs and engineering time. This also includes the cost of operating and maintaining nodes.

For startups, the disadvantages of application chains have a significant impact on the operation of their DApps. Most startup teams struggle to properly address security and cross-chain issues, and are deterred by high costs in terms of manpower, time, and money. However, predictable performance is a critical need for specific DApps, so there is an urgent demand in the market for predictable performance solutions at the Layer 1 level.

Elastic Block Space

In Web2, elastic computing is a common cloud computing model that allows systems to dynamically scale up or down computing processing, memory, and storage resources based on demand, without worrying about capacity planning and engineering design for usage peaks.

Elastic block space automatically adjusts the number of transactions that a block can accommodate based on network congestion levels. If the blockchain network provides stable block space and TPS guarantees for specific application transactions through elastic computing, it achieves "predictable performance".

A certain Layer 2 project has also proposed a similar concept of "elastic dynamic scaling", believing it to be an inevitable development path for DApp support for large-scale adoption. It predicts the following technological developments will emerge in the next 1-3 years:

1. Phase One: Validate node-level horizontal scaling;

2. Phase Two: Chain-Level Static Expansion;

3. Phase Three: Chain-Level Dynamic Horizontal Scaling.

This new project has truly realized this concept, addressing the core issue of the first phase: "how to coordinate verification node horizontal scaling to support elastic computing." As the protocol grows within the network, it allows for the subscription of elastic block space to handle user and throughput growth. Elastic block space provides independent block space for DApps with high transaction throughput demands, allowing for expansion as needs grow. Essentially, block space determines the amount of data that can be stored in each block, directly affecting transaction throughput. When DApps experience surges in transaction demand, subscribing to elastic block space can efficiently handle the increased load without impacting the underlying blockchain.

The implementation of elastic computing is divided into "real-time elasticity" and "non-real-time elasticity". The former refers to minute-level response scaling, while the latter responds to scaling within a specified time. This project adopts the "non-real-time elasticity" method, where the network initiates a scaling proposal when it detects the need for scaling. After one or more epochs, the entire network's validating nodes complete the scaling and submit the scaling proof for other validators to challenge.

The project's elastic block space solution draws on the concept of distributed databases and is a continuation of blockchain sharding technology. From the perspective of "computational sharding," it addresses demand application traffic expansion while avoiding the "cross-shard transaction" problem, ensuring that the experience for developers and users remains largely unchanged compared to before. At the same time, it adopts a "non-real-time elasticity" approach with relatively low implementation difficulty, enhancing applicability while meeting the actual needs of most DApps.

It is worth mentioning that elastic block space serves as a solution for horizontally scaling blockchain performance, provided that "transactions can be parallelized." Only by increasing transaction parallelism is there a need to horizontally scale node machine resources to enhance transaction throughput.

For Layer 1 solutions like Ethereum, the serial transaction problem is a direct performance bottleneck, and the block size is also limited by the variable block Gas limit of (, which has a maximum of 30,000,000 gas). Therefore, the only option is to seek Layer 2 scaling solutions.

For a certain high-performance Layer 1, although it supports parallel execution of transactions and can scale horizontally, it cannot address the "predictable performance" issue during peak demand periods for DApps. This project implements a "local fee market" solution to prevent a single demand transaction from monopolizing scarce block space, limiting the rise in temporal fees and mitigating the negative impacts of sudden demand spikes. For example, during the NFT issuance period, issuers will quickly consume the computational unit limit of (CU) for each account, after which transactions must increase priority fees to be processed within the limited space of that account.

It can be said that this new project addresses the surge in transaction demand through a flexible block space solution, further extending the concept of "local fee market" in a certain high-performance public chain. This not only ensures "predictable performance" for DApps, but also prevents fee surges and congestion across the entire network, achieving two goals at once.

Summary

Whether it's application chains or elastic block space, they are essentially aimed at addressing the issue of different DApps having varying demands on blockchain performance, or the "predictable performance" problem. There is no distinction between the two solutions in terms of good or bad, only in terms of suitability. These two solutions evoke the "Fat Protocol Theory"—proposed by Joel Monegro in 2016—which revolves around how "cryptographic protocols should capture more value than the collective value captured by applications built on top of them."

The application chain is essentially a thin protocol, especially when Layer 1 adopts a modular architecture. The protocol layer is completely customized by the application layer, which brings better value accumulation mechanisms to applications, but also incurs high costs and limited security.

Elastic block space is essentially a fat protocol, an extension of the underlying Layer 1 protocol that effectively lowers the entry threshold for participants with "predictable performance" requirements, while the protocol can capture application value and create a positive feedback loop.