Why is it difficult for the blockchain to be as popular as the Internet since its birth? One of the biggest hurdles is that the respective proprietary ecosystems of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains cannot easily share data or exchange value with each other.
Coexistence of multiple chains in the future
Is the future of the blockchain field an island of value, or value interoperability? With the rise of blockchains such as BSC, Solana, and Terra, the explosion of the second-layer network of Ethereum, and the promotion of cross-chain bridge technology, it is inevitable that multiple chains will coexist in the future.
The Neo Polaris Launchpad online roundtable also specifically discussed the development trend of public chains and cross-chains. BSN Development Alliance Executive Director, Red Date Technology CEO He Yifan, Neo Ecological Development Manager John, and Poly Network core developer Tan Yuan each published their own opinions on Views on future public chain and cross-chain development.
Each chain is like every website now, and will coexist in the future, whether it is a public chain or an alliance chain. From a technical logic point of view, the blockchain must be in full bloom.
John, the person in charge of Neo's ecological development, believes: "In essence, I think that in the future, even for a long time, there should be multi-chain coexistence. There may be a 28 effect, and some heads will be used more Blockchain, like Ethereum, is a technical standard widely used by everyone.”
The same is true for Neo, which should not only have its own uniqueness, but also accommodate as much diversity on the chain as possible.
Judging from the overall development trend, Ethereum’s expansion plan and other aspects are actually still in the process of technological development. In addition, many new applications such as DeFi and NFT will lead to a more prosperous application ecology on the entire blockchain than before.
However, Ethereum itself is affected by handling fees and network congestion. This is actually a better opportunity for some other public chains.
According to Tan Yuan, the core developer of Poly Network, new public chains such as Solana, Avalanche, and Fantom are actually developing relatively well. The overall application development needs definitely need more public chains to support.
Cross-chain technology is a necessity
The number of blockchains is proliferating, and most of these blockchain networks operate on independent ecosystems. As more and more people continue to pay attention to and use blockchains, linking these different blockchains with each other is becoming a necessity.
Cross-chain technology is an emerging technology that aims to realize value and information transmission between different blockchain networks. Therefore, cross-chain technology has increasingly become a hot topic of discussion.
Cross-chain technology is seen as the ultimate solution to enhance interoperability between blockchains. So, what is the core and principle behind the cross-chain? In this regard, He Yifan, executive director of BSN Development Alliance and CEO of Jujube Technology, said:
"How do websites with different communication standards communicate with each other? In fact, there is something similar to cross-chain between them, so why did this thing disappear in the end, because the underlying communication standards are unified. So the core of cross-chain It is the unification of the underlying standard in the future, which is the perfect cross-chain.”
Essentially, cross-chain compatibility allows different blockchains to communicate with each other without the help of an intermediary. This means that blockchains sharing a similar network will be able to transfer value between each other.
Cross-chain plays an insignificant role in the ecological development of any blockchain. At present, there are many cross-chain solutions, but the degree of decentralization is often not enough. Many people use some centralized means to do this cross-chain resource interaction, so it is rarely adopted by developers.
The Poly Network has taken a different approach, through the uniquely designed heterogeneous chain and cross-chain bridge technology, it will control the cross-chain by deploying smart contracts in the source chain. Tan Yuan claims:
"Currently, Poly Network adopts a more decentralized and heterogeneous approach to open up a kind of asset exchange and information circulation between different chains."
There is no doubt that cross-chain technology will attract more and more attention from users and developers, and more and more blockchain applications will increase their efforts to explore the possibility of cross-chain deployment.
NFT must move towards cross-chain
NFT will be extremely popular in 2022 and become one of the most mainstream blockchain trends at present. NFTs touch almost every aspect of everyday life, and expect to see more examples of NFT adoption in 2022.
From the perspective of application scenarios, NFT mainly focuses on relatively simple use cases such as text or avatars. At present, the application scenarios of NFT may not be so rich, and deeper application scenarios will inevitably appear in the future.
Most NFT transactions happen on the Ethereum blockchain. However, the current slow speed and high cost of Ethereum is a burden for most users and is not sustainable, which is why many NFT players are eagerly turning to other blockchain networks, such as Polygon, Solana, Flow, etc.
As NFT is becoming more and more clearly capitalized, it is like the capitalized house in our real world. After assetization, these NFT assets will naturally circulate on each chain, so NFT will undoubtedly move towards cross-chain.
According to John, the person in charge of Neo's ecological development, the circulation of capitalized NFT is a trend. He also added:
"How to ensure the synchronization of the state of NFT on the chain and on other chains, and how to ensure compliance are actually issues that the public chain needs to explore in the future."
epilogue
In the future, the blockchain will be multi-chain, but the idea of users being able to transfer their assets between different blockchains is full of complexity and barriers to implementation, making it difficult to realize.
Various technologies are still under development, and various technologies including bridges will definitely be able to promote the cross-chain of blockchain networks, but the ultimate form of cross-chain needs to be observed.