The technology should run for a long time in multiple scenarios to verify reliability.
As China has upgraded the blockchain to a national strategy and included it in the “new infrastructure”, various industries are conducting research on blockchain technology, and large domestic technology companies such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu are developing their own blockchains The underlying framework is competing to formulate technical standards. A new round of blockchain competition has begun.
The status quo of a hundred schools of thought reflects the prosperity of the blockchain industry on the one hand, and on the other hand, the diversification of technical standards also makes data interoperability on the chain a problem. As in the early days of the Internet, each DApp is now like a local area network. The heterogeneous underlying system makes the data on the chain between DApps incompatibility.
At present, we see the Blockchain Service Network (BSN) as a global public infrastructure network that crosses cloud services, cross portals, and cross underlying frameworks. All the underlying frameworks supported by it include key algorithms, SDK, CA management and All aspects of the certificate and other mechanisms have been unified, allowing applications running on different underlying frameworks to realize the intercommunication of business data relatively easily.
To this end, InfoQ interviewed Zhou Lu, senior architect of WeBank’s blockchain, and Gao Chenxi, senior R&D manager of BSN project of Beijing Red Date Technology, to introduce readers to the standards and application of BSN underlying architecture adaptation.
Selection criteria for the underlying framework
Currently, BSN has supported Hyperledger Fabric and FISCO BCOS. On July 31, BSN updated the domestic version, completed the commercial optimization of FISCO BCOS adaptation, and realized commercial billing and pricing of application services; completed the adaptation of Baidu XuperChain and launched the public beta version; completed the national secret adaptation of Hyperledger Fabric (currently supported Golang chain code language) and launched a public beta version. The underlying frameworks of the alliance chain that are currently being adapted include CITA, Wutong Chain, Brochain, and JDChain.
In the international version, the six public chain frameworks of Nervos, NEO, ETH, Tezos, EOS and IRISnet are currently being adapted. The latest international official website will be updated on August 10.
The current blockchain has two major branches, the public chain and the permission chain. BSN regards the two as an extension of the blockchain technology and supports its underlying framework from the perspective of promoting the pure technology development of the blockchain. When specifically landing, BSN will design and provide services in accordance with relevant laws and regulations of various countries and regions.
Gao Chenxi said that BSN has four standards when choosing to adapt to the underlying framework of the blockchain.
First, it must have the characteristics of an alliance chain. The transaction execution and data ledgers of multiple application chains running on the same node must be safely isolated, and the groups in FISCO BCOS have such characteristics, which are highly compatible with the concept of BSN resource sharing and business isolation, and are also BSN Technically, it is the main consideration for preferential adaptation of FISCO BCOS.
The second is the cryptographic algorithm. BSN is a national and global blockchain network platform. It pays great attention to data and communication security. Therefore, the underlying framework must support national cryptographic algorithms and also support other mainstream cryptographic algorithms to suit different industries, scenarios, and regions. Security requirements.
Third, it is possible to automate operations such as the creation, deployment, expansion, update, removal, and monitoring of operating data of chain nodes, applications, contracts, etc. BSN is a huge service network with hundreds of city nodes. Automated operation and operation and maintenance services can improve developers’ application management experience and effectively reduce operating costs.
The last is ecology. A good underlying framework of blockchain has a complete ecosystem, with an active community, a large number of developers and application foundations, complete documentation and SDK, rich training, etc. to promote each other and develop together with BSN to create a community Blockchain “Internet”.
Of course, even with standards, the adaptation of the underlying framework is not easy.
Gao Chenxi said that for BSN, a unified identity authentication service is the basis for integrating various frameworks to access data on the chain and perform identity authentication. However, each underlying framework has its own key management service, and the types of cryptographic algorithms used by each framework are different, which increases the difficulty of the entire adaptation work.
In order to adapt to the cryptographic algorithms of each framework and provide a unified identity authentication service, BSN has developed a unified identity authentication service to integrate various algorithms and adapt to different underlying frameworks.
At present, BSN has a unified identity authentication service and gateway service in each city node, which manages the identity of different chains for users and provides identity authentication, transaction authentication and transaction routing functions for users to access data on the chain. Through unified identity authentication and transaction authentication, users can access different blockchain frameworks through the same identity, and even use the same key certificate to access and use different frameworks of the same cryptographic algorithm, and perform services with different application permissions operating.
There is also the issue of resource usage statistics. For application chain smart contracts running in a separate container, BSN can easily obtain and limit resource usage, but for contracts running in-process, it is not easy to accurately count the resource usage and limitations.
In the process of adapting FISCO BCOS, GAS is an indicator of the amount of resources used by a contract during its operation. Since BSN is billed based on CPU and memory as resource operating indicators, in order to accurately count the resources consumed by GAS and contracts, developers have conducted a lot of tests and data calculations to arrive at an accurate calculation rule.
What should the underlying framework platform do?
As the first domestically-made underlying technology platform to join BSN, 4 of the 12 officially designated blockchain applications launched by BSN use FISCO BCOS as the underlying framework, which are applied in the aspects of deposit certification, anti-counterfeiting traceability, supply chain management, etc. .
According to Zhou Lu, the current FISCO BCOS single-chain TPS has exceeded 20,000, supporting the parallel expansion of parallel multiple chains. The platform is equipped with many peripheral components, such as operation and maintenance deployment tools, contract naming services, data archiving and migration tools, contract life cycle management tools, etc., to achieve functional “out of the box”.
FISCO BCOS has built a security system including whitelist verification, CA certification, key management, etc., and at the same time fully supports the cryptographic algorithm system of the National Cryptographic Bureau, adopting authority control, zero-knowledge proof, homomorphic encryption, group signature, ring signature, etc. Technology ensures the security, controllability and privacy protection of the alliance chain.
There are over 10,000 developers in the FISCO BCOS open source community. Based on the underlying platform and a series of solutions, enterprises in the ecosystem have implemented hundreds of application cases based on FISCO BCOS, of which more than 80 applications have been running in the production environment.
In the process of BSN adapting to FISCO BCOS, in order to meet the numerous management functions and application interface requirements of BSN, WeBank introduced the self-developed blockchain middleware WeBASE (WeBank Blockchain Application Software Extension). WeBASE is a set of common components built between blockchain applications and FISCO BCOS nodes. It designs various modules around transactions, contracts, key management, data, and visual management. Developers can choose subsystems based on business needs. deploy.
In addition, WeBank also participated in the formulation of the BSN underlying architecture adaptation standard, and worked with related parties to promote the formation of a unified technical standard for adapting the underlying framework to BSN.
Zhou Lu introduced that after FISCO BCOS completed the adaptation and entered the public beta on April 25, many FISCO BCOS developers use BSN, and many have also been certified as BSN co-developers. In the 14 types of scenarios covered by BSN designated blockchain application recruitment, all corporate and individual developers are developing and deploying application projects based on FISCO BCOS on BSN.
In the field of supply chain management, the “Huiyun Chain” project of Nanjing Anlian Data Technology Co., Ltd. provides logistics insurance supply chain financial solutions for logistics car-free carrier platforms, insurance, banks and other enterprises; in the field of anti-counterfeiting traceability, Zhejiang Tian Yanweizhen Network Technology Co., Ltd. has implemented the “blockchain-based agricultural whole-process traceability”; in the field of construction, Shenzhen Jianxin Construction and Technology Co., Ltd.’s “Iraq OS Transparent Construction Platform”; in the field of certification, Hangzhou The “Blockchain Electronic Data Security System” of Yibi Technology Co., Ltd., the “Short Video Attestation System” of Hangzhou Milian Technology Co., Ltd., and the “Blockchain Attestation Service System” of Wuhan Liandong Times Technology Co., Ltd. Is a representative application.
In addition, developers will also actively feedback and put forward some new functional requirements. Zhou Lu said that WeBank will continue to publish FISCO BCOS-based application components on the BSN portal for the convenience of developers.
“The technology should run for a long time in a variety of scenarios to test its reliability. At the same time, it should also ensure high-frequency continuous iteration of the technology to maintain the vitality of open source technology.” Zhou Lu said.
Expert introduction (in no particular order):
Zhou Lu, Senior Architect of WeBank Blockchain
Gao Chenxi, Senior R&D Manager of Beijing Red Date Technology BSN Project