In 2009, the birth of the distributed data-interactive ledger Bitcoin network led the first-generation blockchain revolution; in 2015, the launch of Ethereum promoted the prevalence of smart contracts; in 2021, the third-generation blockchain main network with unlimited expansion Dfinity is live. Why Dfinity broke the barriers of the second-generation blockchain and became the disruptor of the third-generation blockchain revolution. This article is the first article in the series of articles [Why Dfinity can become a disruptor].
The traditional Internet uses TCP/IP protocol to connect everything, but if we want to build a website, Internet service enterprise system or other system connected to the Internet, we need to use a proprietary IT stack, usually through AWS or other cloud services The company adds servers, and then deploys applications and databases on the servers. At this time, the servers need to be protected by firewalls, but even paying high monthly security maintenance costs cannot avoid the risk of being hacked and data leaked.
Traditional blockchain applications have not been fully decentralized. At present, smart contracts can only be deployed on the chain, but the front-end is still deployed on a centralized server, so the above problems cannot be avoided. Users are all through the front-end. Interactively, requests to smart contracts are issued through the front end. If there are related risks in the entire interaction process, the entire Dapp will stop working.
Back to Dfinity, it is built based on a distributed protocol (ICP), which brings together a large amount of computing power to form a general-purpose open source computing platform that can support programs of any scale and complexity. The platform's hierarchical structure consists of software containers, subnets, data centers, and nodes.
On Dfinity, developers can build websites, Internet enterprise systems, pan-industry platforms and DeFi of any scale without owning CDN, database, firewall, etc. DFINITY itself is a huge DNS server. Because of the nature of the way software containers work, database service containers can protect the user's direct access to the web browsing experience and the data is tamper-proof.
Many friends may not have any concept of this software container (Canisters). Software container is the basic interoperable computing unit in Dfinity. Each container is scalable. It is the most basic element of the Internet computer group, usually It is understood as a smart contract. Its performance far exceeds that of smart contracts. It is composed of codes and arrays. Each application function of Dfinity must be completed through the container—the computing unit.
No matter what language the software is written in, it will be compiled into WebAssembly modules, and then these modules will be run by the container, thus forming a container. The developers of Ethereum will think that this is a smart contract, but the container and the smart contract are not the same , it not only has the characteristics that smart contracts should have, but also the performance that smart contracts do not have. It can provide scalability for software services. Not only that, it also has the characteristics of Actor, WebAssembly modules, and Process in the operating system. The combination of these four parts is the concept of software container. The introduction of Actor in the container is mainly to solve the problem of scalability.
We can think of the entire Internet computer as a big ship, the container is the tank on the deck, they are independent of each other, and the subnet is what connects them to each other through a conduit. We have mentioned subnets in the previous articles. Subnets are created by combining different node machines. Because containers are stateful, at this time, nodes need to come out to copy the state between containers. Subnets are mainly It is hosting containers. Different subnets can communicate with each other, so containers hosted on different subnets can also communicate with each other, which causes containers on different subnets to call containers on different subnets.
Briefly talk about the hierarchical structure of Internet computers. The bottom layer is an independent data center hosting dedicated hardware nodes. These node machines are combined to form subnet nodes. The subnet hosts containers, and the containers execute WebAssembly modules. The current blockchain cannot be fully hosted on the chain. Dfinity can not only achieve true decentralization, but also break the data island of the traditional Internet and the deadlock of blockchain 2.0, allowing Dapp to run completely on the chain. The cost of running container hosting on Dfinity only costs $5 worth of Cycles, and as long as you have enough Cycle gas resources, you can keep running forever.
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