For the past few weeks, we have broken down the layered architecture of Nervos and discussed why it works for us, and how having these layers lends itself to us building towards an internet-like experience.
But, in this final segment of the ‘Why Nervos Works’ series, we will be looking back at the words of our Chief Architect, Jan Xie. He noted how Nervos, and the CKB blockchain, are an abstraction of Ethereum, just as Ethereum is an abstraction of Bitcoin.
This is an interesting concept, but one that underpins exactly what Nervos is striving to do with its layered approach and multi-chain strategies to forge an even better blockchain platform. In this article, we’ll do a quick recap of the very short history of the blockchain space and share with you how Nervos is positioned to help usher in the next blockchain evolution.
In the beginning…
Bitcoin was the original blockchain, and in its simple whitepaper, it set out to solve a problem with the financial system. Bitcoin introduced the idea of being trustless through its consensus model, removing the need for financial intermediaries and providing a basic framework for improving how we control money.
Ethereum built on this basic model but pushed it even further with the smart contract solutions, which could remove any intermediaries in nearly any instance, adding a whole new world of flexibility and potential.
Forging a new path
Bitcoin set us on a revolutionary path to a more decentralized financial world. However, the lack of capability of the underlying technology required evolution. Hence, Ethereum came along and provided a novel solution that continued to progress the evolution and capability of blockchain technology.
The reason for Ethereum’s success is that it solved thousands of problems systematically while others were trying to solve only one at a time. Smart contracts were a huge evolution from what Bitcoin could do – moving value around in a decentralized peer-to-peer manner.
With smart contracts, Ethereum’s ability to be a ‘World computer’, lay the foundations of programmable blockchain, and evolve to solve many different problems became a reality thanks to its abstraction from Bitcoin.
Just as the abstraction occurred from Bitcoin to Ethereum, there will likely be a next level abstraction as Jan explains:
“I would argue that a new abstraction is the hallmark of evolution and that the next-generation blockchain must be more abstract than its predecessor. The Bitcoin to Ethereum leap was the first blockchain abstraction, and I believe it won’t be the last. As for how the post-Ethereum era might resemble, one should initially think about what can be abstracted further away from Ethereum.”
The next evolution
At Nervos, we believe we are on the path to the next evolution stage. Just as Ethereum managed to solve issues arising from Bitcoin’s limitation by abstraction out, so Nervos is already showing solutions to Ethereum’s current scaling and state bloat concerns that have troubled even some of the most popular chains in the space.
Additionally, we believe in order to head toward a new global decentralized economy, we need a new vision of what an ideal blockchain should be like in the future. One with multiple permissionless blockchains, permissioned blockchains, and tools that enable the mass migration from Web2 to Web3. All of these working together to create a universal internet-like public network – this is what the next evolution will look like.
Since launching Nervos, Jan and the rest of the team have been working towards creating this next evolutionary step. The secure and decentralized CKB chain, with its flexible and future proof layer 2 architecture, is inherently multi-chain and can be the foundation of a universal internet-like public network that will abstract away many of the complexities currently faced by new users. This lays the foundation for a better experience by the next generation of users.
A better user experience
As we look at the post-Ethereum era, we have always believed that a better user experience will be vital in solidifying the next abstraction. Established pain points are currently holding back a massive wave of mainstream blockchain adoption.
At Nervos, we have been working towards creating solutions to many of these problems and we aim to provide an internet-like experience for users. We want Nervos to be the one single place that users go to, to use one wallet and still access multiple chains and the opportunities they present, use dApps across multiple chains and basically have unfettered access to the entire blockchain ecosystem through Nervos.
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