UNDERSTANDING PLATON, THE EMERGING COMPUTING/ARCHITECTURAL NETWORK FOR BLOCKCHAIN PROJECTS

Hello there!
It's been quite a while we did a review of blockchain projects. In this post we'll briefly run thru project PLATON, covering its goals/vision, and indeed its entire essence.

So here we go...

As we probably know, the success of blockchain to a greater extent is dependent on its scalability capacity. And by scalability here, we simply mean the rate at which transactions are validated/computed on blockchain. Normally, the higher the scalability rate, the more efficient and reliable the blockchain is. Safety, privacy, and security of users' data are also top-notch concerns in blockchain which if broken, can create a while lot of damage to users/clients. However, blockchain as we have today is laden with so much challenges which inevitably impede its mass adoption. For instance, many blockchains are faced with scalability issues that hinder their efficient performance, making them unable to render trustless computing. Whereas ideally, blockchains should utilizes trustless computing model in their transactions which rely not on third parties for verifying transaction results. This brings us to the next issue of inaccurate verification. This simply has to do with inefficient computations which in turn facilitate malicious attacks. Under this also is the wrong algorithm for incentivizing miners. In some cases the miners spend huge resources verifying transactions but earn nothing in return due to wrong algorithm which only rewards block producers who 'win mining contests'. This often result in verifiers/miners skipping verification processes which in effect increased chances of attack on the system/blockchain. The resultant impact here is security/safety concerns coupled with the breach of users' privacy. To worsen the case, some blockchain networks offer no confidentiality whatsoever for users data. A lag that only repels users and by implication, impeding mass adoption of the blockchain technology.

These and many more are some of challenges that PlatON aims to tackle.

The PlatON's bluepaper states thus of it's goal:

The initial goal is to construct a trustless computing platform with cryptographic based verifiable computing, as a solution for the scalability, privacy and verifiability challenges that impeded blockchain. Source

Basically, Platon tackles the blockchain challenges of scalability, privacy, security, decentralisation, etc by using an off-chain strategy. This is a concept in which computing tasks are migrated off-chain, thus separating it from the consensus layer (on-chain). The off-chain computing involves the use of a 'scalable, privacy-preserving and verifiable computing infrastructure' that 'allow untrusted entities to engage in collaborative computation.'
Here, blockchain is used only for verification purposes.

Platon also utilizes trustless computing using VC (verifiable computing) algorithm which makes use of only internal setups that accelerates the verification process and the generation of proof. It uses secure Multi-party Computation (MPC), and Full Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to ensure privacy of data. This privacy is further enforced through its trustless computing which relies on 'falsifiable cryptographic assumptions'

So how does the data exchange on Platon work?

Here is briefly how:

When users deploy smart contracts and or send transactions on the platon network, the computation tasks are broken and distributed to a number of computing nodes which securely execute the computations and also generate the proof. The results of the computation including the proof are then broadcast on-chain and verified by block producers before they are returned to the users via the smart contract. Thisverifiable computations ensure accuracy of off-chain computations.

In other words, PlatON seeks to develop a scalable, fast, and secure blockchain for efficient running of decentralized applications by bringing about a large scale computing. Thus developers and project owners can securely set up their dapps on the PlatON platform by utilizing the platon facilities.

I would say this should be a go-to spot for any blockchain developer and indeed new projects.

Why?

Because in a nutshell, platon is one platform that has the interest of all at heart. It not only guarantees decentralization, safety, scalability, and privacy data with its off-chain computation model, but also offers infrastructure and resources such as APIs, technical services, etc which developers can utilize to build their applications and even sub-chains upon the network. It offers trustless computing infrastructure in its entirety which dapps could utilize for their effective performance and which could also be used to scale other blockchains.

Summarily, PlatON has has highly commendable features which which dapp creators and project owners can sieze hold of to better their applications. Some of these include:

• It has an off-chain verifiable computing which is must useful in complex and heavy computation tasks as it generates proof of computations to ensure accuracy of its results

• Its homomorphic encryption and Secure multi-party computing ensures that private data is stored in an encrypted form thus, preventing abuse/breach by third parties.

• Dapp creators have the ability to create appchains on platon to service their various dapps.

• It offers services to otter blockchains and dapps thru its base chain smart contract.

• Platon blockchain served as a database built on top of it's computing platform to store states and proofs of computing. It also serves as a settlement layer which facilitates transactions.

• It offers privacy protection by leveraging different cryptographic algorithms to ensure trust and boost confidence in its users
  This privacy-preserving computation ensures that users data are not obtainable by any third parties.

• Offers a fast and highly scalable network for both on-chain and off-chain computing.

• Platon is powered by it's own digital asset known as energon which is used for all economic transactions/payments and serves as 'the base unit for computing power' within the network.

Here're some links on Platon you'd find useful:

Website:

Bluepaper:

Whitepaper:

References:

1; 2

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