The MOVE public chain is an alliance chain continued: an informal response to the crusade from the Move ecosystem

This is Whistle's 4th article (the 3rd article can't be published...)**, in response to **** crusade by many friends of the Move ecology. **

Author | Beichen

Whistle, as a newly registered self-media account, is the first officially published article "Reversing Technology! Aptos and Sui are actually alliance chains, and their lives depend on the patience of capital. "In the case of a completely cold start, it can still attract so much industry attention (firepower), which is somewhat beyond expectations.

This article has been recognized by many friends in the industry, and two friends have even expressed their investment intentions (by the way, we don't need it at this stage, just "but do everything, don't ask about the future").

At the same time, because it challenged the mainstream view of the industry, it attracted crusades from many people in the Move ecology. The most concentrated criticism was "Counterattack!" A number of senior developers refuted some remarks criticizing the Move-based public chain" - 6 developers refuted a total of 12 points of view.

**Although our views are different, they are all focused on technical discussions, and this kind of debate helps to promote the healthy development of the industry. **

Whistle should arrange an article to refute the rebuttal of that article, but Steven said that the more basic the dispute (such as whether Sui is a blockchain), the more rigorous it is. rebuttal.

We actually did two interviews in total, and some of the detailed discussions were not reflected in the article (mainly due to space limitations, but it does not affect all the conclusions in the article), so today I will post the second interview first. The part involving details, as an informal response**, Steven's official response will be posted in a few days.

However, since one of the 12 rebuttals is Beichen's point of view (3), I will reply here first, and I will respond to the two controversial points of view (4, 7) on behalf of Steven.

View (3):

Controversial original text:

"People in the currency circle seem to be quite ignorant**. For example, after Dfinity (ICP) appeared before, many people engaged in technology in the currency circle were very excited, thinking that its narrative is very grand and can solve many problems, but in fact that It’s the story of cloud native, how many years Microsoft and IBM have been engaged in.”

Counterattack:

"There is indeed a problem with the construction path of ICP. But the author of this ** should think that the path of "decentralized cloud computing" is wrong, but Web3 is decentralized cloud native. **" - Jolestar, founder of Rooch, a Layer 2 project that supports Move

** Beichen's response: **

First of all, I don't think that "decentralized cloud computing" is wrong, nor do I think "cloud native" is wrong, **I just think that Dfinity's decentralized cloud computing is wrong. **The reason has nothing to do with technology, but that its business logic, economic model, and resources make it difficult to develop. Of course, this point of view can be explained in a separate article, so I won’t repeat it here.

Secondly, I also think that "Web3 is decentralized cloud native", but it is definitely not the cloud native developed by Dfinity.

View (4):

Original text of the dispute:

“No new technological paradigm has emerged since Ethereum.”

Counterattack:

"If you refer to the earliest Ethereum, in fact, it and other technology paradigms change very quickly. ZK, DA, Verkle Tree, interactive fraud proof**, the earliest initiators of these technology paradigms are not Ethereum Fund Yes, but it was quickly borrowed and absorbed by Ethereum.

For example, Ethereum borrows from Celestia in DA and Cosmos’ Tendermint in the PoS consensus protocol. ZK is not considered the technology of Ethereum itself, but the Ethereum Foundation has spent a lot of effort in promoting the concept of ZK.

In addition, the **Move language can also be regarded as an innovation in the technical paradigm. ** Algorand and Cardano's paradigm innovations on POS are also important, but they have not yet experienced large-scale tests. "—Zhou Qi, founder of EthStorage, an Ethereum ecological storage project

** Beichen’s response on behalf of Steven Yuezu: **

First of all, it is necessary to clarify what ** "paradigm" (Paradigm), it refers to a theoretical framework, not a technical detail. ** From Newton's classical mechanics to Einstein's theory of relativity, this is called a paradigm shift. Although Boltzmann's energy equipartition theory between them is great, it is not a paradigm shift.

**ZK, DA, Merkle Tree, and interactive fraud proofs are all technologies applied to the blockchain, not the blockchain itself. **They and the blockchain can have a good combination, but at least there has not been a paradigm shift like Ethereum did to Bitcoin.

However, the technology of the Meta series (including the Move language) is indeed an innovation in the technical paradigm, but we think it is going in the wrong direction...

It is very good, but ** it does everything from technology to business, and it is all about the alliance chain, so don't get involved with the public chain. **

View (7):

Original text of the dispute:

"Move is not a good language because Move doesn't work without projects like Aptos and Sui."

Counterattack:

"This is exactly the same for Solidity. If Solidity is separated from the chain that supports EVM, it will not work. "XXX is not a good language, because if you leave the XXX ecology, XXX language cannot be used "The same is true for many programming languages. "——Nanne2022, Senior Move Ecological Developer

"Steven would say this mainly because Solidity and Move require a dedicated virtual machine to execute, which requires a dedicated program, but Java, which dominates the entire Internet development field, also requires a dedicated virtual machine. If Java just started at the end of the last century Soon after it was launched, some people would say: **** "If Java is separated from the JVM ecology, it will not be usable, so it is not a good language". ——Move community member eternal

** Beichen’s response on behalf of Steven Yuezu: **

Steven stated at the very beginning of answering this question: "Their (Solidity and Move) foundations are different, so it is impossible to say who is better."

And at the end of this question, he also said: "It has nothing to do with language. All public chains starting from Libra are problematic, and this is the root of all problems."

The question is not whether Move is a good development language, but whether Move is a good "blockchain development language", Steven's answer is very clear-**Move's ecology is not blockchain correct direction of evolution. **

Some technical details from the last interview:

**Beichen:**Why do Meta projects "have neither blocks nor chains"?

Steven: The original origin is that Facebook made a Libra for the payment system. It is a standard alliance chain. It was originally intended to be promoted to the world, but it was terminated for various reasons.

Its overall idea is completely different from that of the public chain. It does not have a complete block structure, nor does it have a complete structure pointing to the linked list, so I say that there is neither block nor chain.

**First point, its account is very special. **

We create an account on the traditional public chain, which will generate a public-private key pair, and then use the public key to hash to generate the account address. The private key is everything to you. If you lose the private key, the account will be gone.

Although Libra also creates an account with the same structure, the public-private key pair can be replaced. It starts from the perspective of alliance chain users, and considers the same as traditional bank accounts, that is, what to do if the private key is lost.

This is good for individual users, because the possibility of losing the private key is quite high, and many bitcoins are actually dead bitcoins.

Aptos has inherited this feature. The way they restore accounts is more dangerous from the perspective of the blockchain—the account under your address can actually be restored by others. **You cannot lower the security level of the system just because the private key may be lost. **

**Second point, its consensus algorithm is very strange. **

Its innovation in the consensus algorithm is actually based on the belief that most nodes are trustworthy, which is equivalent to managing all nodes as a cluster, which is a typical alliance chain approach.

So it will have a shared memory pool protocol, which puts unpackaged block information transactions in the memory pool, and all nodes share with each other through the memory pool protocol, which is equivalent to the buffer zone in the traditional business cluster. Then select a lead node among the nodes, which is responsible for sorting the transactions in the buffer zone, then proposes a transaction block, and notifies other nodes to vote, and two-thirds of the votes will be executed.

To be honest, this vote is not very meaningful, because it only confirms whether the content in the new block submitted by the lead node is consistent with the historical state, and the generation of the lead node is theoretically predictable, which is very dangerous.

Of course, all systems that adopt the BFT consensus protocol more or less have such problems—the number of nodes should not be too many (which will affect the efficiency of the consensus), nor too few (the security of the system cannot be controlled).

The nodes of Ethereum also have random selection, but Ethereum adopts the Slot (time slot) method to divide the time series, which is equivalent to artificially adding another layer of elections to separate the mining nodes in time and space, taking into account efficiency and safety.

Let's go back to Libra. Its leader node has a very large authority and will control the entire network with a small amount of computing power. **

The transaction data of the traditional public chain has to be transmitted twice in the entire network (broadcast once and verified once), while Libra has already processed the block information by the lead node, and only propagates the serial number to other nodes. After receiving the serial number, they will Transactions are executed in the order specified by the lead node, and the amount of data exchange in the whole process is very small, which means that if the lead node does evil, it is difficult for others to control.

Beichen: How do other nodes judge whether the lead node is doing evil?

Steven: This is definitely impossible to judge. The execution sequence issued by the lead node, other nodes can only verify whether the status before and after the transaction is correct.

**Beichen:**How to understand Libra's "neither block nor chain"?

Steven:** The entire Libra data is actually a relational database with a version number. **It just uses the transaction as a carrier. This database with a version number consists of a triplet of recorded transactions, output results, and ledger status. It will change the status of all items in the triplet for each transaction, and then through different to determine whether the ledger is valid.

**This is completely different from traditional blockchain. **Every transaction on Bitcoin and Ethereum can be traced back to the most original tokens (tokens dug out by mining). And Libra is to modify the state (that is, a different version) for each transaction, and then make a global consensus on this version.

You can say that it is subversive and reconstructs the blockchain, but this approach is only suitable for alliance chains, not for public chains, because its global state control and security between different nodes cannot be guaranteed.

We said before that the reason why the Move language is not a good blockchain programming language is that it can only be used in the Meta-based data format with a version number, and has nothing to do with the public chain.

Beichen: This is also my personal confusion, that is, is the alliance chain necessary? If you pursue absolute security, then go to the public chain, if you pursue convenience, then use the Internet, as an intermediate alliance chain does not make much sense.

**Steven:**The high performance of the consortium chain comes at the expense of decentralization and security. Their performance and security can be completely improved with a centralized system and a little cryptography, this It can be done on the server platform and cloud platform, the efficiency is definitely higher, and the security is not necessarily lower, so there is no need to use the blockchain, not to mention the alliance chain is not a real blockchain.

Summarize

Steven will also "in the spirit of seeking truth from facts, conduct interviews with a number of technical experts in the industry, and discuss the 12 arguments in "Counterattack! Several senior developers refute some remarks criticizing the Move public chain", please expect!

Here is an advertisement for our Steven. He used to do 5G communication in Lucent, and now he helps some domestic crypto funds to look at the public chain.

He is optimistic about the blockchain, but he often publishes violent comments on the blockchain. **Aptos and Sui are just the first ones we talked about... and will continue to output violent comments in the future. **Welcome to initiate various challenges to Steven!

As a communication engineer for many years, Steven has his own unique insights into the blockchain system. This controversy at least shows that in the crypto market that is overwhelmed by various noises, there are still many people willing to pay attention to and discuss about the industry. Authentic and piercing sound**.