Flow Blockchain is a brand new blockchain designed for the next generation apps, games and digital assets.
Flow is simple to use and easy to develop with. Every element of the platform was built from the ground up in order to provide exceptional user experience on a mainstream scale.
Flow was originally created by the CryptoKitties team. Today, Flow is a decentralized network that is supported and developed by a growing group of Web3 builders and brands.
Flow is a fast and decentralized blockchain that developers can use to build new apps and games. It’s based on a multi-role architecture and is designed to scale without scaling. This allows for huge improvements in speed and throughput, while keeping the environment developer-friendly and ACID-compliant.
Flow allows developers to create thriving crypto- or crypto-enabled companies. Flow applications allow consumers to keep their data in control; enable them to trade new digital assets on open markets anywhere in the world; and create open economies that are owned by those who make them valuable.
Smart contracts can be built on Flow like Lego blocks and power billions of apps, from basketball enthusiasts to businesses that have mission-critical needs.
Flow Blockchain – Multi-Node Architecture
Every node in a traditional blockchain stores all of the state (account balances and smart contract code) Each node performs all the work required to process every transaction in the chain. This is similar to having one worker build a car.
Pipelining is a popular technique to dramatically increase productivity in manufacturing and CPU design. Pipelining is applied to blockchains using Flow. It separates the validator node’s jobs into four roles: Consensus collection, execution, verification, and verification. The separation of labor between nodes takes place vertically (across each transaction’s validation stages) and horizontally (across all transactions, like with sharding).
This means that every validator node participates in validation, but only at one stage. They can thus specialize in their specific stage and increase efficiency.
This allows Flow scale to thousands of times greater throughput and lower costs while still maintaining a shared execution environment that supports all operations on the network. Smart contracts and user accounts can interact with one another in a single atomic, consistent and isolated (ACID), transaction. This allows developers to easily collaborate and provides a great user experience.
Sharding: Problems
Many proposals seek to increase the scalability and scalability blockchains by separating them into interconnected networks. These are often shards. However, sidechains can have the same problems. These methods remove serializability (“ACID”) guarantees that are common in database systems.
The loss of ACID guarantees can make it much more difficult and risky to build an app that accesses data across multiple fragments. Smart contracts interact very complexly with each other, making it more difficult for large-scale applications to scale across multiple shards. Transaction failure rates and latency issues make scaling across shards even more complicated. This combination severely limits the number of applications that can be used on the network and their impact on the network. The problem of scaling blockchains is not solved at the protocol level, but it is shifted onto the application developers by Sharding.
One simple user action, purchasing a CryptoKitty hat using TUSD, can take 12 transactions and 7 blocks on a blockchain. The same action can be executed in an ACID-compliant, unsharded environment such as Flow by one atomic transaction within a single block.
Even worse than the added cost and time, is the increased attack surface. It will be more difficult to design, test and harden smart contract codes on a sharded Blockchain.
(Shading Problem Solution ) Multi-Role Architecture Flow
Flow pipelines are the work of a validator or miner of blockchains across four roles that all require stakes. This separation significantly reduces redundancy.
- Consensus Nodes determine the order and presence of transactions on the Blockchain
- Execution Nodes must be kept under control by Verification Nodes.
- Execution Nodes compute the transaction-related computations
- The collection nodes increase network connectivity and data availability to dapps
Flow is designed so that any one honest node of any role can punish or trigger recovery from invalid data caused by dishonest collection or execution nodes.
Together, the Flow network’s security foundation is Consensus Nodes and Verification Nodes. They leverage cryptoeconomic incentives to hold other members accountable. These validators are capable of optimizing security and decentralization. The roles of Consensus/Verification have been simplified to allow for high participation even by people with low-end hardware and home internet connections. HotStuff is the most reliable proof of stake, and Consensus nodes use it.
Upgradable Smart Contracts
Smart contract platforms make it clear that they can be trusted by users rather than the smart contract authors. This aspect of blockchains opens up use cases that are just beginning to be explored. The most significant of these is the concept of open service and composability.
Smart contract platforms were created in their initial form to ensure that contract code could not be modified after release. This is the simplest way to accomplish the goal. If the code cannot be modified, even by its original authors, then you don’t have to trust them after code has been launched.
Software is difficult to learn the first time. There are many examples of smart contracts with subtle issues that lead to huge losses of funds, even when there are talented teams and motivated communities.
Many developers expressed the desire for a smart contract to be improved or fixed after deployment. Some have spent a lot of effort to create a mechanism in their smart contract that allows for migrations or upgrades. Each developer must create their own mechanism to upgrade smart contracts. This adds complexity and makes them less trustworthy.
On Flow smart contracts can be deployed to mainnet in “beta states”, where code can be incrementally modified by original authors. The unfinished nature and trustworthiness of the code will be made clear to users. Authors can release control of the contract when they are certain that the code is secure. The contract will remain inviolable for the remainder of the time.
This system allows users to be aware of the type of code they are working with, whether an application or smart contract is trustworthy. It also gives developers the ability to modify their code for a short time after shipping.
A Green Web3 Network
HotStuff is a well-proven proof-of-stake consensus system. Flow adds a multi-node architecture that drives dramatic improvements in speed and throughput without the need for sharding or “layer 2”.
Flow is therefore the most environmentally-friendly Web 3 network of all major platforms. An NFT is less expensive than a post on social networking sites.