Marlin: The scalable way of Layer 0

I have talked about the scalability of the public chain many times before, but most of the time I discussed the scalability of Layer 1 and Layer 2, such as sharding, Plasma, ZK-Rollup, Optimistic Rollups, state channels, side chains, etc. Today, Blue Fox Notes focuses on Layer 0. What does scalability through Layer 0 bring to blockchains like Ethereum? Nodes are the foundation of a blockchain network. Nodes record transactions, participate in validation, propose blocks, earn rewards, and more. To reach a consensus, these nodes need to maintain consistency, availability, and communicate with each other. The amount of communication time between nodes has a substantial impact on the scalability of the blockchain. Layer 0 is the communication layer for passing information between nodes. The way information is structured is directly related to the efficiency with which consensus can be reached. The speed at which consensus is reached is related to the scalability and security of the blockchain. From this perspective, Layer 0 can also contribute to improving the scalability of the blockchain. The difference between the blockchain network and the centralized network is that the blockchain network does not require permission, and it must consider the restrictions from the Internet itself. If it is a centralized enterprise, private lines can be used to improve network performance through CDN and SD-WANs. For a decentralized network, this is unrealistic. In addition, in today's encryption incentive system, there is competition among mining nodes. After a miner shares the mined block with its neighbors, the neighbors have an incentive not to spread the block further, because it can gain some advantage. In other words, such an incentive mechanism not only fails to motivate some nodes to accelerate the dissemination of their known information, but also has the possibility of delaying the dissemination of information. It's also bad for scalability and security. So, is there any chance to solve these problems mentioned above? Marlin is marlin, said to be the fastest fish in the world. Marlin is the communication layer serving the blockchain. It hopes that under its promotion, the speed of the blockchain network will become faster and faster, just like a marlin. Marlin hopes to contribute its own solution to the development of blockchain scalability through Layer 0. (Marlin is said to be the fastest fish, Marlin.pro) In order to improve the TPS of the blockchain, generally speaking, from the perspective of the chain, there are two methods, one is to increase the block capacity, the other is to shorten the block Time (horizontal sharding is not considered here). Rocket Pool Smartnode stack upgrade to support the upcoming Redstone upgrade and Ethereum merger: On July 29th, the Ethereum pledge agreement Pocket Pool Smartnode stack was upgraded to v1.5.0, supporting the upcoming Redstone upgrade and Ethereum merger. Among them, the Redstone upgrade is expected to be carried out on the mainnet on August 29. Additionally, this version will be fully compatible with the launch of Goerli - Prater Merge around the second week of August, and users wishing to test it will need to upgrade to this version as soon as possible. In addition, this version will no longer support light clients such as Infura or Pocket, users need to run a full execution client. [2022/7/29 2:45:47] If the method of large blocks is adopted, nodes need to spend more time to verify the received information, which will delay the speed of block broadcasting; if the block generation time is shortened, the output The block rate will face the fork problem, and one of the reasons is also limited by the speed of block propagation. In order to increase the speed of block generation, it is necessary to accelerate the propagation of blocks. The current block propagation speed is not conducive to increasing the block generation speed. When people modify the block size of Bitcoin from 1M to 32M or even 2G, or shorten the block generation time from about 10 minutes to a shorter time, it can indeed improve scalability, but it brings bigger problems , For example, the whole node is offline, the situation of unable to synchronize data increases, and even the block needs to be reorganized. Once the block is too large and the block time is too fast, there will be problems with the consistency or availability of the network. One of the most important reasons is that the full node is limited by the physical conditions of the network and hardware, and cannot verify and broadcast in time. And this is what Marlin is trying to solve as Layer 0. It tries to find the fastest block propagation speed scheme under the current physical conditions, so as to improve scalability and alleviate the communication delay troubles of the Layer 1 public chain. In the solution of the Marlin protocol, there are two cores, one is the relay network, and the other is the economic incentive mechanism. In the Marlin network, there are nodes specially used for relaying, called Marlin Nodes, and nodes transmit information to each other, which can speed up the propagation speed. Marlin borrows CDN acceleration technology and divides the network, so there are many relay networks. The current network layer is also not conducive to decentralized protocols. In the current mechanism design of some protocols, because of competition, miners have the motivation to relay their blocks and receive the latest blocks, but they have little motivation to actively spread other miners. The block, the miner hopes to dig out the block first. Nodes expect other nodes to broadcast and hitchhike themselves, which can save bandwidth costs. At the same time, this mechanism will also lead to centralization, because in the end, only those large nodes have the incentive to forward these transactions. In order to solve problems such as selfish mining, Marlin incorporates an economic incentive mechanism. Nodes in its network can get rewards as long as they successfully relay information, thereby encouraging the rate of information transmission. By introducing a network layer with an incentive mechanism, attacks such as spam/DDoS can also be prevented. Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital mined 707 bitcoins in the second quarter, and its holdings increased to 10,055: Golden Financial News, Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital (MARA) produced 707 bitcoins in the second quarter, compared with the first one a year ago It was up 8% in the second quarter, but lower than the 1,259 mined in the first quarter. The reason was "operational obstacles," including maintenance issues and severe storms at the power plants that power the company's Hardin, MT rigs, and ongoing delays in supplying nearly 30,000 installed miners in Texas. In addition, Marathon has not sold bitcoins since October 2020, and now its holdings have increased to 10,055 bitcoins, with a fair market value of $198.9 million. (Coindesk) [2022/7/8 1:59:13] In addition to providing scalability for the public chain, Marlin can also provide accelerated services for DeFi applications. Siddhartha is the founder of Marlin and the former core developer of the public chain project Zilliqa one. He once mentioned: "For example, in the DeFi field, Marlin's relay framework can provide peripheral interfaces, which provide DeFi traders with the advantage of low latency. In the early stage of DApp, when querying APIs such as Infura, Alchemy, and Graph, loading The time is often as high as 10 seconds, which is very slow. Marlin Cache can reduce this delay to about 250 milliseconds, and can achieve performance similar to web2.0 in DApp." All P2P applications use the network layer for node communication, which leads to Any application that uses decentralized storage or computing can also take advantage of Marlin's services. For example, applications currently using IPFS have to use a centralized CDN to help users improve performance. The advantage of Marlin is that it allows these applications using Filecoin/Arweave to achieve good performance even without a CDN. From this perspective, Marlin is similar to Akamai in the Web 2 era. Marlin solves the scalability problem of the public chain on Layer 0, the core stems from its design in two aspects: relay network and token incentive mechanism. 1. Relay network The Marlin protocol is a protocol for constructing a relay network. Marlin nodes following its protocol requirements form a relay network. In addition to Marlin nodes, there are auditor nodes, which ensure that relay nodes and the relay network adhere to their performance and SLA guarantees. Users of the Marlin network can have miners and full nodes. Miners use the Marlin relay network to broadcast their data packets and blocks, while full nodes (wallets or merchants, etc.) use the Marlin network to receive the latest transactions and blocks. Therefore, the Marlin network is essentially a relay network market. Valor announces former 21Shares managing director Marco Infuso as chief sales officer: Jinse Finance reported that Swiss digital asset ETP issuer Valor announced that former 21Shares managing director Marco Infuso joined the asset management team as chief sales officer (CSO) to lead the exchange Global sales of transactional products (ETPs). It is reported that Mr. Infuso deepened his knowledge of blockchain and cryptocurrencies by obtaining a Certified Crypto Finance Expert (CCFE), the leading Swiss crypto and blockchain designation in the financial industry. In January this year, Valor invested in SEBA Bank's Series C financing and entered into a priority cooperation agreement with SEBA Bank. [2022/7/5 1:52:38] The main participant of Marlin network, Marlin.pro In the picture above, Marlin divides its participants into producers, receivers, relayers and relay clusters (relay The internet). Where producers are a group of nodes that introduce blocks into the relay network. Producers are usually miners, and they broadcast blocks as quickly as possible. Producers are responsible for the validity of blocks, and producers who introduce invalid blocks will be punished. Receivers include other miners, exchanges, wallets, block explorers or other nodes, etc., and they want to receive blocks as soon as possible. Recipients need to pay a subscription fee to the protocol to become a recipient. Relayers are groups of nodes that relay blocks from producers to recipients. Relayers will be rewarded to spread the block as soon as possible, and only those nodes that participate in relaying the block will have the opportunity to earn benefits. A relayer cluster is a set of relay networks composed of relayers. They are collectively responsible for propagating blocks and are rewarded for doing so. Furthermore, how is the Marlin protocol network structured? A Marlin network can be divided into four parts: creation, management, packet broadcast, and monitoring. The Marlin network is composed of many Marlin nodes. To become a Marlin node, you first need to run the Marlin relay node software and pledge a certain amount of tokens, which will be mentioned below. These nodes need to meet certain requirements, such as good network connection, location distribution closer to end users, etc. Collin Capital announced its official investment in Polkadot's ecological NFT trading platform NFTMart: On April 20, Collin Capital announced its official investment in Polkadot's ecological NFT trading platform NFTMart, and at the same time, Polkadot's ecological NFT trading platform NFTMart announced the completion of a $1.5 million private placement round of financing; NFTMart is developed based on Substrate and is a decentralized NFT trading market. It consists of two parts: the first part is the open NFT public chain nftmart.network, which is mainly used to issue NFT and data transactions on the chain; the second part is nftmart. io, provides users with a user-friendly trading solution, enabling users to create or trade NFTs conveniently and quickly. Collin Capital began to deploy NFT as early as 2018. The official investment in NFTMart this time represents another important layout of Collin Capital in the NFT track. Next, Collin Capital will continue to empower NFTMart and bring more to the platform. Traditional IP and high-quality resources; promote the combination of art and technology, and reshape the new ecology of the encrypted cultural industry. [2021/4/20 20:39:50] After becoming a Marlin node, the node and relay network can display their own features, functions and prices to their target users (such as miners and full nodes), including IP addresses, median Data bandwidth, longitude, latitude, public key corresponding to pledged tokens, etc. And miners and full nodes can choose the relay network according to their needs. This forms a trading market. Nodes can create relay clusters, set the maximum number of nodes allowed to join, the maximum and minimum number of nodes to join according to geographical location, the minimum pledge amount of nodes, the minimum configuration requirements of nodes (bandwidth, CPU core, etc.), minimum SLA requirements, etc. . Once a relay network is created, it will automatically appear on the Marlin marketplace. After a node creates a relay network, it needs to be managed, including node joining, parameter adjustment, node exit, etc. A node can join a relay network by being invited or applying to join. After a majority of votes agree, a node can be invited to participate in its relay network, and the invited node can join as long as it publishes and receives the invitation transaction before the invitation expires. Another way is to apply to join, if the majority vote agrees, you can join the relay network. After a relay network is created, it is not immutable. Although the nodes in it will follow the initial parameters at the beginning. However, with the addition of subsequent nodes, these nodes will also have the right to speak. According to the changes of user demands and the competitive environment of the relay network, the parameters of the relay network may also face adjustments. These all need to be changed through governance. At present, the Marilin network uses voting to adjust parameters. If a minority of nodes disagree, they can choose to leave and create their own relay network. There is no connection between coinmarket and coinmarketcap: the online trading platform coinmarket.xyz is invested and built by the data website coinmarketcap. The editor sent an email to coinmarket.xyz for confirmation. The business is different, the team is different, and there is no connection. [2018/3/1] Finally, a node needs to say hello when it exits a relay network. If a node quits a relay network casually without greeting, it will be very unfavorable to the relay network and its users. In Marlin's relay network, if a node exits silently or exits early, the pledged tokens will be reduced. A node exiting the relay network can initiate an exit statement transaction. If the relay network finds a replacement node, it allows that node to exit before its claim period ends.

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