DeFi, Interoperability and Beyond
Looking into the future of the Nervos network
The first Nervos town hall was held this week, Jan Xie, chief architect and researcher, introduced the roadmap for the rest of the year and answered questions from the community with the help of co-founder Kevin Wang. For more info, check out the video and recap. The presentation focused on plans for DeFi, infrastructure, research and development, and a new concept, which embodies a vision of the Nervos network, "Interoperability 2.0".
The internet was used as an analogy to communicate this new idea. Every day we use numerous Internet protocols without thinking about them, developers handle the complexity and for everyone else it just works. Similar to the internet, Nervos is built with a layered architecture and can be the foundation of a seamless user experience. Diverse wallets and cross-chain transactions become compatible and these details can start to be abstracted away from the user. To see the start of this concept in action, you can open ckb.pw with an Ethereum wallet today to securely send and receive CKB. (Great work Lay2!)
There is no doubt that DeFi is the hottest topic to emerge in crypto since the bear market took hold in 2018. In the next few months, you can expect significant advances in DeFi on CKB, including libraries for issuing tokens, a generalized cross-chain bridge framework, oracles and production-ready DEX projects. Polyjuice, an Ethereum-compatible layer on CKB, also deserves a mention here, it's available today, check out the port of ENS to CKB.
By end of year we'll also see a production-ready framework for optimistic rollups (Godwoken), a payment channel prototype for CKB and tokens, as well as light client demos (desktop, web and mobile). On the research front, keep an eye out for more efficient light clients, a more performant VM, a new smart contract language, privacy on CKB, zkRollups and a programming model that can finally unify Layer 1 and Layer 2.
Sparklings
Here’s a recap of the most recent Nervos hackathon, read about the amazing projects produced over a short period of time
Co-founder Daniel spoke at the Open Finance Conference to discuss BSN integration
Frank from Portal Wallet (which recently completed Milestone 3 of their grant project) was interviewed by Forkit, China's first blockchain technology podcast, and shared his thoughts for large-scale blockchain applications and why he chose Nervos CKB for development.
“When I was working on Portal Wallet, I always thought that users should not have to re-install infrastructure, and if they could use what they already had installed directly with a new chain. Therefore, with the first version of Portal Wallet, you can send and receive CKB with an Ethereum address/wallet. After that, Tron and EOS will be supported immediately, so that the blockchains with the largest number of users and the best ecosystems will be addresses on CKB”
“Internet technology is also very complicated. Technologies like cloud computing and load balancing are not any simpler than blockchain technology. However, for apps that can scale tens of millions of users, users don’t have to worry about these technical details, and they just use it and have the best experience”
“I started working on layer 2 in 2018, not because of gas fees, but because Ethereum infrastructure is restrictive. E.g. an unlock signature has to be in a particular format, and no logic can be added, and it is not possible to have more than 14 temporary variables in a function. After I learned about Nervos CKB, I suddenly became enlightened. I had a feeling of holding my breath in the water for a long time and suddenly came up.”
“The next goal of Portal Wallet is to break away from any blockchain infrastructure and directly use it in Internet infrastructure. Libra has only 1 Billion users, the Portal Wallet is for all web users.”
The HXRO meme contest has produced some great memes, here is a sample:
and here’s one more meme!
Technical Updates
RFCs
Nervos applies the RFC (Request for Comments) process for implementing every building block of the protocol. There were 27 Previous RFCs that can be found here .
If you are curious about why a design in CKB is what it is now, please post your questions in this repository .
Core
CKB
Dev Tools
Lumos [JavaScript/TypeScript based dapp framework]
Polyjuice [an Ethereum on CKB solution]
Update README to support EoA account and value transfer
Support value transfer from/to EoA/contract account
Capsule [development framework for creating smart contract scripts in Rust for CKB]
Support map dirs into build container
Upgrade ckb-std to 0.6.2
Neuron
CKB Explorer
Layer 2
Muta [layer2 framework on CKB]
SECBIT Labs [Zero knowledge proof toolkit for CKB]
Ecosystem
Hxro [Gamified Crypto Trading Platform]
Tocial [cosplayers’ photo sharing app]
Lay2 [pw-sdk, build dApp on CKB and run them everywhere]
Obsidian Labs [developer IDE]
Synapse [browser wallet and keyper agency]
BlockABC [onechain CKB and web auth]
GrowFi [token swap functionality]
Obsidian Systems[CKB integration with ledger wallets]
Summa One [BTC/CKB interoperability (completed)]
The Nervos Foundation currently runs a grants program for builders. check out the scope and how to apply .
CKB Weekly is curated by a group of people who witnessed Lina’s birth and started this to record her growth. Any views expressed are personal and do not represent an official position of the Nervos project. Got updates or articles you would like to include? Any feedback or other suggestions? Let us know by replying to the email.
If you are interested in contributing, welcome to join the review group on TG.
Meanwhile, there are links below if you want to learn more about the project and community.