Title
Thin Blockchain Protocol based on Minus Theory
Team member names
0xKJ and Yanbo
Short summary of your improvement idea
In early 2024 Dr KJ proposed the Blockchain Minus Theory showing a new direction to build the high performance programmable applications based on existing infrastructures.
Since Bitcoin emerged, all the new blockchains add new features to the chain design but making the infrastructures more complex. Minus Theory shows that we could build a blockchain thinner than Bitcoin from the consensus perspective.
We aim to design and implement the Thin Blockchain Protocol based on Minus Theory. The protocol can reuse existing blockchain infrastructures to build more complex applications, including Ethereum and Layer 2s.
We will bring python to blockchain programming, which may attract tons of new developers to the blockchain world with richer dev tools and effective idea implementation process.
Q&A
What is the existing target protocol you are hoping to improve or enhance?
In the existing blockchain paradigm, solidity and EVM is used to build blockchain applications. However, due to the limitation, more complex applications can hardly be built with current technology stack, leading to an expensive usage cost and huge on-chain storage requirement, and even the computation resource insufficient (block gas).
We aim to propose the Thin Blockchain Protocol to solve the current situation, to enable more complex blockchain applications possible. Based on the Minus Theory, we only use blockchain as a consensus machine to make the transactions in fixed order. The on-chain execution and verification are removed.
Like the inscription system, the execution VM will be placed off-chian in the indexer. This unlocks the computation and storage capacity to run the more complex program. Moreover, we bring the python language to space, which is the programming language with most audiences in the world. Developers are familiar with the tech stack and it is easy to build applications.
What is the core idea or insight about potential improvement you want to pursue?
We borrow the core concept from the computer science textbook - the state machine to model the blockchain.
It shows that if blockchain keeps the transactions in order after consensus, the off-chain computation can always get the unique state. Thus, the global state and the state computation can be moved off-chain. The on-chain consensus can skip the verification to save computation cost and increase TPS.
This insight shows the direction to improve the way blockchain applications can be built. This Minus Theory was inspired by the inscription which was popular last year. The theory shows more insight from a consensus perspective, that why we should remove the verification from consensus.
Facet Protocol is doing the similar thing by introducing Dumb Contract and rubidity language. Users can get a cheaper blockchain experience.
We are creating a new protocol with python language to enable function-based serverless application, which is more developer and user friendly, as the Protocol Improvement of Facet.
We learn from a lot of existing designs such as EIP 6551 to enable private key changing and enhance the security.
What is your discovery methodology for investigating the current state of the target protocol?
We model the blockchain with a classic textbook data structure (State Machine), to obtain method from the attributes.
Current blockchains are keeping both the input and state on-chain, which is unnecessary.
The state machine theory told us, if all the history inputs are kept, all the states can be reconstructable.
Thus, removing the states out of the blockchain is a potential new design.
However, we don’t need to modify blockchain before we prove it is working, the protocol can work with existing infrastructures.
In what form will you prototype your improvement idea?
We will do the code implementation of the protocol prototype.
Besides, we will build the new application demo based on the prototype implementation. The new app is not suitable to build with the previous tech stack, but works with our new protocol.
It will show the strength of the new protocol.
How will you field-test your improvement idea?
We could launch a testnet to demo our new protocol.
The online or offline workshop can be hosted, to attract more people to build applications.
Who will be able to judge the quality of your output? Ideally name a few suitable judges.
Guido van Rossum - the creator of python
domo - the creator of brc20
Dr Jinglee https://twitter.com/ordjingle
How will you publish and evangelize your improvement idea?
- Minus Theory whitepaper.
- Publish open-source code
- Python VM test env (SDK)
What is the success vision for your idea?
The new protocol could show an new application platform based on existing infrastructures. It is a new direction of blockchain paradigm.
The new protocol and development environment may bring much more existing developers to the Web3 ecosystem.
Pure decentralized high-performance blockchain (no VM on chain, chain VM detach from node) as the new blockchain standard of the new direction in future.