The continued rise of Interoperability 2.0

With ongoing developments we see the unique advantages of Nervos on display

Dec 11, 2020

Sparkling

This week we saw the introduction doc to the Force Bridge released on Github from Wenchao, the core developer of Force Bridge. From this document, we can see that the solution is an SPV-based bridge, which means that a light client on each chain will verify transactions that occur on the corresponding chain.

The first deployment of the Force Bridge will connect CKB and Ethereum, allowing CKB to verify Ethereum transactions through a merkle proof of inclusion in a block header and Ethereum to verify CKB transactions in a similar way. Assets will be created or burned on each blockchain once proof is received that they have been moved on the other chain.

We learned a few more things about the Force Bridge as well, including that a 2.0 release is targeted to be fully decentralized, requiring only honest majority hashpower on both chains to remain secure. Also asset support on Force Bridge will initially support ETH and ERC20, however components will be able to be re-used to support additional asset types such as ERC721. Force Bridge will also allow users to send assets to a contract or script, opening up the programmability of assets moving across the bridge.

Due to the cryptographic flexibility of Nervos, a Nervos-specific wallet will not be required to access this new functionality. We are looking forward to checking out the usability of these new cross-chain solutions!

We are also excited to see a forum post that refers to Ethereum on CKB solution Polyjuice running in optimistic rollup solution Godwoken. It seems that all Ethereum functionality (including the concepts of gas and fee payment) will be supported inside Polyjuice. Developers will not need to modify their Solidity code to run an application inside Polyjuice, this means that with Godwoken any Ethereum application will be able to be run inside of an optimistic rollup secured by CKB!

Another interesting event this week was the Solana network halt due to a bug. One of the most common questions asked about Nervos is “why choose proof of work consensus?”, in this event we can see that the finality introduced in PoS can have some unintended consequences that can not be produced in PoW networks. PoW networks may fork (due to a bug), however miners can simply select the best chain and continue producing blocks.

The resilience of PoW networks is just one of the many reasons why Nervos is secured by proof of work! For more information check out this article.

RFC

Nervos applies the RFC (Request for Comments) process for implementing every building block of the protocol. There were 27 Previous RFCs, which 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.

Dev Updates

Core

CKB
- (#2373) refactor: single instance async runtime
- (#2379) let the consensus params orphan_rate_target to be configurable
- (#2389) upgrade ckb-vm to fix memmap security warning
- (#2385) use blake2b-ref for wasm and upgrade secp256k1
- (#2392) skip RUSTSEC-2020-0082 temporarily
Dev Tools
- Lumos [JavaScript/TypeScript based dapp framework]
  - (#129) fix Query indexer return unordered result
- Polyjuice [an Ethereum on CKB solution]
- Capsule [development framework for creating smart contract scripts in Rust for CKB]

Neuron
- (#1936) support acp short address generation and parsing
- (#1938) increase test coverage in service layer
- (#1928) support pw transfer
- (#1937) restart child process if fails in starting lumos indexer
- (#1933) resolve conflicts from master branch

CKB Explorer
- (#747) support short acp address
- (#749) fix: dao contract cache bug

Layer 2

Muta [layer2 framework on CKB]
SECBIT Labs [Zero knowledge proof toolkit for CKB]
- (#38) develop new scheme - hyrax
- (#35) new scheme - libra
- (#36) add poseidon_clinkv2, rescue_clinkv2 example
- (#34) spartan: optimization & bugfix
- (#33) add curve25519

Cross-chain

force-bridge-btc [maps BTC on Bitcoin to cBTC on CKB in a trustless way]
force-bridge-eth [maps ETH on Ethereum to cETH on CKB in a trustless way]
- (#88) fix handle timeout when failed to update cell
- (#84) fix verify original data to suit every situation
- (#83) fix infinite loop when sending tx error
- (#69) fix support eth light client add batch headers
- (#80) dapp server update
- (#73) dapp server api update
- (#79) add a retry mechanism when sending transactions
- (#71) make create bridge cell creates multiple cells at one time

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]
- Release CKB Studio v0.9.0
  - support testnet by BSN
  - create cells from a file
  - faucet for Aggron testnet
  - transaction signing for multisig
  - witnesses display

Synapse [browser wallet and keyper agency]
- add test for upload file component
- add test for import private key page

BlockABC [onechain CKB and web auth]
GrowFi [token swap functionality]
Obsidian Systems [CKB integration with ledger wallets]
Summa One [BTC/CKB interoperability (completed)
LeapDAO [Sidechain Framework]
- (#77) Add function that read private key from env

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, we welcome you to join the review group on TG.

Meanwhile, here are links if you want to learn more about the project and community.

CKB Weekly