How does Nervos solve the last mile of blockchain

2021-06-29 19:03

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A truly decentralized domain name system with low barriers to entry could pave the way for more radical end-to-end encrypted communications, decentralized homepages, and unified password-less login credentials.

原文标题：《解决区块链最后一个公里丨 Nervos 为什么值得期待》

原文来源： Runchen，TalkChain

Human imagination is actually very limited. But what's interesting is that humans with limited imaginations are constantly creating things beyond our imagination.

Ford famously said that when you ask a man what he wants, he will tell you I want a faster horse. But when you put the car in front of him, he will love to accept it and never go back.

When 4G first came out, people thought it was a faster horse. At the time, people flaunted their download speeds and lamented the increasing cost of telecommunications. Back then, 4G was just a geek plaything, along with autonomous driving and blockchain.

But when 4G really took off and the diminishing marginal effect came into play, people realized that the development of the new technology was actually revolutionary. The spread of 4G is the foundation for China to overtake in the mobile Internet era and create the past glorious Internet decade.

It is no exaggeration to say that 4G will change human life as much as cars. Without the popularity of 4G, we would not have the sudden rise of live streaming, short video, small programs, or even online ride-hailing, O2O and other industries.

Back in 2013, when 4G first appeared, there were a lot of doubts. Until now, some people have said that 4G base stations are harmful to radiation. But as Marx said, things go in a spiral, the wheel of history rolls on, maybe for a while but never stops.

The development of new technology is always difficult, especially when people are used to the old technology. People will instinctively doubt, to resist, only a few people will take the initiative to accept or even embrace. But the wagon of new technology will never stop.

The logic of innovation: inject new variables into the system

One word I particularly like is "variable." Every innovation of science and technology is actually injecting a variable into the system of our life, and each new variable will combine and collide with other elements.The result of the collision and superposition of countless variables is the dramatic change we see in our lives.

We see today's dips because the variables behind them have matured. High-definition navigation maps, more accurate satellite positioning systems and the popularity of mobile Internet are the prerequisites for the development of online car-hailing.

After that, the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence technology helped Didi continuously optimize the matching and navigation system. The impetus of capital, the improvement of urban laws and regulations, and even the replacement of new generations are all variables for the emergence and growth of the drops.

The birth of every new thing is the result of the combination of countless variables. At the beginning of each change, we inject a new variable into the system.

The advent of blockchain is the equivalent of injecting the variable "decentralization" into the system.

It turns out that there are "constants" in the world that can be set artificially, such as the total number of Bitcoins not to exceed 21 million. We also discovered that there are many things in the world that can be done without trust.

So we've seen the rise of Open Finance (DEFI), smart contracts on blockchains that faithfully operate according to predetermined rules. I no longer need to trust my counterparty or rely on a third party with sufficient credit to transfer, exchange, and lend assets.

Then we have NFT. This form of chain-based credentials creates a new consensus. The concept of the meta-universe has been proposed in science fiction for a long time, so it is more likely to be grounded.

But that's not enough, because there's another variable we need to inject, which is "low barriers to entry."

What is the low threshold? Before you called Didi and often couldn't locate, you had to tell the driver where you were. "I don't think you know your position," the driver said. Now open Didi, you can basically accurately locate your position, but also recommend nearby pick-up points to you.

That's the low bar. High-precision maps, more accurate satellite and base station assisted positioning, and big data optimized car dispatch system give Didi a real chance to be used by the majority of people.

Technology will eventually be commercialized into the home, but there is a premise. Technology will eventually reach millions of people through low-entry, or embedded, commercial use.

So in 2021, the most important variable for blockchain, I think, is "low barriers to entry."

CKB makes low barriers to entry the new variable

The barrier to entry for blockchain is not low. On the contrary, it is ridiculously high for the average person.

Even Metamask and imToken, which are recognized as high-quality products in the industry, are extremely difficult to understand when users first contact them. Users need to understand mnemonic words, private keys, miners' fees, and more importantly, you can lose your entire asset if you don't understand the concept.

For users outside the circle, I cannot perceive the advantages brought by blockchain, but I have to pay a huge learning cost in the first place. So why did I do it?

So today's blockchain users are basically two kinds of people: geeks who are passionate about new things themselves, and fliers who are motivated by the wealth effect. In the second group, a lot of people's understanding of blockchain is limited to prices, K-lines, and centralized exchanges.

The development of technology will eventually be commercialized into thousands of households. But how this thousands of families to go, it is a question worth exploring.

To lower the threshold, we need to solve the problem of the user's private key. Escrow is one way, but if hosting is actually the point of the blockchain is diminished, trust is still highly concentrated in the hands of centralized custodians.

Decentralized managed private keys require the public chain to be optimized from the bottom up, which is why I keep seeing Nervos. Because Nervos was designed from the very beginning with the idea of "going into every home" in mind.

Making Nervos the blockchain layer of the Internet is easier said than done. To achieve this vision, Nervos did three things:

- Simplest and longest chain principle;

- Unique cell model and complete account abstraction;

- Open cryptographic primitives are supported at the bottom.

In the design of the entire network, Nervos considers a wide variety of situations, and puts scalability and openness at the forefront of the design.

One of the open cryptography primitives gives Nervos's Layer 1 Network CKB the ability to parse various digital signatures. Digital signatures and asymmetric encryption exist widely in the Internet world, such as E-mail.

A sent an email to B, so how does B know that the email was sent by A? This involves DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) technology, which is an authentication technique to protect against E-mail fraud.

A will use the private key of the domain name to encrypt and generate signatures when sending emails. This principle is basically the same with Bitcoin and Ethereum. In turn, B will verify the signature through the Domain Name Resolver (DNS) upon receipt of the email, and if it is consistent, it may be assumed that A sent it.

Of course, push up the chain and you find that it's all centralized. First of all, A's signature is not signed by A himself, but by its email providers such as QQ mailbox and Gmail. DNS is centrally owned, and one layer at a time we have the concept of root certificates.

A centralized authority with sufficient credibility issues root certificates, and then layers of certificates and signatures to various institutions. This root certification institution can be a national government, a non-profit organization, or even a civil society organization.

CKB can then read the certificate and its signature to determine the authenticity of the email (or other encrypted information) in a decentralized manner.

All centralized institutions are capable of doing evil, but it is reasonable to believe that large companies like Google and Tencent will not do evil for the sake of ordinary people in most cases, because the consequences of being caught doing evil far outweigh the benefits.

Based on this, we can argue that Nervos can to some extent leverage the Internet world's centralized brand credit and reputation. Password recovery via email is not only available on the Internet, but also on the decentralized Nervos.

Blockchain is like Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossoms Land,"At the beginning, it was very narrow, but only accessible to people. After a few more steps, it suddenly became clear."The beauty of Nervos is that it provides a gateway to the blockchain world for ordinary users.

The world of blockchain is suddenly open before us.

Unipass, the last mile of the blockchain

If Nervos opened up a channel for Internet users to enter the blockchain world, then Unipass wants to connect the last mile of the blockchain and make it easier for users to enter the new world.

Using the features of open cryptography primitives, UniPass builds an identity authentication system based on mailboxes and mobile phones. Like all traditional Internet accounts, users log in with an email and password. The user's private key is generated through the browser's underlying layer (SubtleCrypto) and encrypted through the password.

The email is used to restore the account. I wrote earlier that CKB can verify the DKIM signature, so Unipass can do account recovery by verifying and interpreting the contents of the message.

Simply put, when registering for UniPass, the private key is generated and an authorization is issued to the email address, which we can think of as an encrypted will. This cryptographic will ensures the mailbox's right to unlock the private key, so users can self-authenticate themselves by signing the email's DKIM, which in turn can unlock and manipulate the account's assets.

Based on this system, UniPass can be seamlessly embedded in a variety of Internet scenarios. Just imagine, in the future, users will be able to check their NFT holdings through small programs, and can easily complete the injection of blockchain accounts on any web page.

UniPass creates an open, decentralized identity authentication system that can be easily integrated into a variety of scenarios. This is a huge variable, because in the process, no one can stop others from accessing the open system.

Imagine a scenario in which a user's NFT could be used as a condition of entry for commenting on a website. Assets accepted by users in software A can be viewed and called freely in software B. In the whole process, users don't need to understand what a blockchain is, they just need to remember their account and password.

Unipass solves the problem of the last mile of blockchain application.

When the low threshold decentralized domain name becomes possible

Nervos was playing a big game from the start. It wanted to be the blockchain layer of the Internet, building a decentralized, secure underlayer. On top of that, inject more variables into the blockchain and Internet world and expect interesting chemistry.

While other public chains are trying to replicate Ethereum, only Nervos is going its own way. Fortunately, the value of Nervos is increasingly being recognized by developers.

I wrote earlier in my article about Yang Min (Yang Min: twice through the bull bear's long-termist encryption industry said"), a product manager from Dachang and the founder of Eospark. They have developed a decentralized DAS (Decentrailized Account Systems) based on the Nervos system.

Das is not the first player to force the Domain name and account system. Ethereum has ENS, and the blockchain world has players like Handshake and Unstoppable Domain. But as mentioned earlier, the biggest difference of DAS is that it injects a new variable of "low barriers to entry" into the product.

DAS accounts can be held at any address on any public chain, and even ordinary users without blockchain accounts can use Unipass.Because the DAS is based on the underlying CKB, which has native support for open cryptographic primitives, the DAS can actually be held by Ethereum, Bitcoin, or even TRON addresses.

This gives the DAS great extensibility. In combination with the previously mentioned UniPass, users of DAS no longer need to understand what a blockchain is and what a private key is. They can buy, hold and set up a DAS by logging in with an account password according to the old usage habits.

To get an ENS, users must first possess ETH and learn to use Wallet Connect or MetaMask. After a long registration process, step by step to set the resolution, address, the threshold is very high. However, DAS only needs to be able to log in with the email password and pay with WeChat.

At present, DAS is still in the stage of testing network, and the official version is expected to be launched in July.

Will blockchain change the world?

Blockchain has had a very grand narrative, like a creation myth in which a new king rises to challenge an old king. When the myths crumbled and those grand narratives went up in smoke, many people began to lose faith in the industry.

After cycle after cycle, many people seem to forget why the industry was born in the first place. But fortunately, more and more good people are staying in the industry, and they are doing things in the face of doubts and abuse.

The construction of infrastructure is never completed in a day, and changes happen every day in a small way. Most of us realize long after the change has taken place that we are not the same as we were ten years ago.

All innovation and technological evolution is bound to be accompanied by controversy and incomprehension. But the wheel of history will always roll forward, and those who keep their heads down to do things will certainly drive the development of the industry.

Blockchain is going to change the world, and no matter how incredible it may seem, I have no doubt about it.