Shipping Blockchain Applications As Hardware
November 16, 2020
I'd be honored to have developers, entrepreneurs, and curious souls from the Blurt community attend my workshop.
https://cosmos.network/series/code-with-us/distributing-your-blockchain-as-hardware
If you are a blurt community member, you have probably heard me talk from time to time about integrating Blockchain software and hardware. You may have seen posts of mine requesting fairly exotic builds of Blurt. About the builds that I was requesting, I have not yet been able to complete them successfully. There are some issues with libraries that we use for blurt and arm64 compatibility, and that is why I've crowdsourced the task.
If we had those builds, the entire Blurt stack (blockchain back end + condenser) could be distributed as an automatically generated Raspberry Pi image. You wouldn't need to rely on sites like:
- https://blurt.world
- https://blurt.blog
- https://blurt.buzz
- https://blurtworld.com
- https://blurtter.com
Instead, you'd be able to connect to your own personal blurt instance containing your own personal copy of the Blurt blockchain, all running on less than $100 in hardware. When a blockchain organism has more nodes, both the blockchain organism and the community built around it are primed to be more resilient and prosperous.
This isn't an either/or situation, it's both. Ideally, there are hundreds of sites and tens of thousands of nodes. The cost of operating a witness drops dramatically.
The Problem
The current generation of proof of stake blockchains has a class of issues caused by over-reliance on cloud infrastructure:
- Lack of network diversity:
- major cloud outages could take down blockchains
- High cost: the cloud (or bare metal hosting) is not cheap!
- I spend $500/mo on bare metal and cloud servers for Blurt, and we use a very economical host
- I run the vast minority of Blurt's infrastructure. Other operators have similarly high spending.
- This is a barrier to entry for Witness candidates, and current setups require a fairly complex configiuration.
- I spend $500/mo on bare metal and cloud servers for Blurt, and we use a very economical host
- Lack of sovereignty:
- There is no cloud, only other people's computers.
- Low node count
- This is very simple: the more nodes a blockchain has replicating its state, the healthier its network is.
We are not the only blockchain or blockchain ecosystem that has this problem. This problem is universal among the current generation of proof of stake chains-- you can find it basically anywhere in the map below:
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The Solution: Nodes as Devices
By shipping blockchain nodes as preconfigured devices, you solve many problems:
- No complex configuration needed
- Full Sovereignty for your community
- Application is not restricted to just a few web interfaces
- Blockchain network improves its health by becoming more diverse and resilient
The Workshop
In the workshop I'm going to guide participants through using Starport to build a very simple blockchain application that features blog capabilities.
After that I'll show developers and entrepreneurs the process of bringing a chain to life as hardware.
Starport
https://github.com/tendermint/starport
Starport allows you to begin your blockchain development journey in just a few minutes. It includes a curated set of carefully designed front and back end components.
- Cosmos SDK modules written in Go
- Vue.js components for your front end interface
While Starport is an excellent scaffolding tool, and is very complete, you should think of it as the beginning of your journey. Using the scaffolding chain generated by Starport, you are provided with a simple framework for building more complex peer to peer blockchain applications.
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You are doing a great job. In my opinion, your considerations are going in exactly the right direction and I am sure that the number of nodes and witnesses will increase significantly if your concept works technically. I very much hope that many developers will contact you who can solve your library scaffolding problems. I really want to be a witness, but it fails both because of the costs and because of my limited technical skills. I will not take part in your workshop. But I'm really excited about the successes from your work.
By the way, I can't read the words in your map even by zooming in.
There is a link to that map in one of my other replies to people here.
https://whimsical.com/blockchain-application-frameworks-QMBL1NAZTQJtb5k2vk8QRK
Thank you.
Ohk , a long post and an important post for blurt as well.
I am in for your workshop and i am looking forward to workshop.
I just saw the workshop is on Nov 16. And i am happy that i will probably not be busy that day and i will surely join with you.
I don't know if i will able to manage two R pi devices by that date but still am i allowed to join in case i don't have those.
I know it will all be a theory part for me but still i am joining in any condition possible.
We are with you jacob. Let all the developers join the workshop by @jacobgadikian.
Thank You for sharing the info friend.
I should change the description.... Won't need two Pi's for the workshop, one will surely be enough :).
The two is more like guidance for people looking to do sustained dev work against rpi
PS:
I'm up to four, and as such am out of ports in my router.
....that is why the good lord gave us 48 port switches, amirite?
Nice to hear that. Actually when i went at the page where we have to register for the worshop.
It was written there so i mentioned it here.
Now it's clear for everyone.
And 48 port switche, do you own that...?
I have so far seen a 42 port at my college , one of my teachers had that dont know what he must be doing with that.
Anyways will join on 16th november for sure.
all the best to you to for the workshop.
one last question , Is this your first workshop...?
Yes, and I am nervous :).
Will thoroughly prepare.
Oh , I see...!!!
don't worry i know you ll do very well.
And for your part , keep practicing and give a awesome workshop to all of us.
All the best friend. you have our full support.
see u on 16th Nov then.
It is exciting how you are envisioning this kind of revolutionary approach to make the blurt blockchain more robust and resilient achieving a cheap node operation @jacobgadikian
So it's actually not only Blurt.
Starport is a Cosmos ecosystem tool, that's what I'll be demoing in the workshop, but the fact is that these changes are widely necessary. I don't think the "map" image really did it justice, here is the source file:
https://whimsical.com/blockchain-application-frameworks-QMBL1NAZTQJtb5k2vk8QRK
Pretty much all modern dpos/pos/bpos/similar systems would benefit from large increases in node count.
BTW wait till you hear how Blurt scales. That is going to be lot of fun.
That's the way every blockchain should go.
I'll be happy to invest a little in some hardware to run my own blockchain node .
Great potential developments! This is super innovative @jacobgadikian Thanks for operating outside the box.
oh, I hope this ends up quite inside the box.
;)