Huobi public chain officially open sourced and developed using Nervos CKB

On October 31, 2019, on the 11th anniversary of the Bitcoin white paper, Huobi Group announced that Huobi Chain was officially open source. Currently, the source code of Huobi Chain has been uploaded to Github, and global blockchain developers can track the development progress at any time and participate in improving the code together.

Huobi Chain is a high-performance public chain jointly developed by Huobi Group and Nervos Foundation, with core technologies and independent intellectual property rights. It is deeply customized based on open source components such as Muta, CKB-VM, Overlord, and nervos-p2p, and is expanded and optimized for financial application scenarios. It aims to build a global financial service infrastructure in the blockchain era and serve the mainstream market.

" What people want is not blockchain, but the changes that the blockchain-based digital economy brings to their daily lives," said Wang Yijiang, head of Huobi's public chain.

Based on the concept of "making finance more efficient", Huobi Chain improves transaction throughput through the adaptive pipeline algorithm of the Overlord consensus algorithm and reduces consensus algorithm latency using aggregate signature technology. At the same time, Huobi Chain uses CKB-VM based on the account-based RISC-V instruction set to implement a high-performance smart contract virtual machine that is more friendly to compilers and hardware.

CKB-VM is stable and does not require frequent hard fork upgrades. It also has advantages such as support from a wide range of open source ecosystems, which will enhance the diversity of Huobi’s public chain.

For built-in first-class asset types, Huobi public chain adopts built-in system contract management for user assets, which greatly improves security and versatility while reducing complexity.

In addition, Huobi public chain supports native cross-chain protocols. The side chain developed based on Nervos CKB and Muta technology can directly realize cross-chain, and Huobi public chain supports highly flexible virtual machine contracts and high-performance native contracts, which will make Huobi public chain suitable for different business scenarios and make the landing application scenarios of Huobi public chain richer and more diverse.

Wang Yijiang believes that complex systems must be decoupled in the end.

Based on the layered architecture of the classical Internet, layered expansion is the consensus to improve the performance of blockchain. The security and decentralization of the network are guaranteed through the first-layer public chain protocol, the second-layer protocol provides scalable transaction and computing services, and multiple application layer protocols connect business scenarios, so as to build the public infrastructure of the next generation of encrypted economic network.

Huobi public chain uses CKB (Common Knowledge Base) to adjudicate default situations, and enables the definition, storage and circulation of CKB layer like Bitcoin. All planning and applications are completed by Layer 2.

"We have implemented an Account SDK on top of CKB-VM to implement the Account model in Huobi public chain smart contracts. Not only that, we also provide a contract programming language," said Wang Yijiang.

This "programming language" refers to Minits, which uses LLVM to ultimately compile the code into RISC-V binary to run in CKB-VM, thereby improving the efficiency of the CKB-VM layer.

Huobi public chain sets the first-class citizen status for native tokens and UDT, which is called first-class asset (FCA for short). Specifically, the basic behaviors of all tokens are implemented by the native contracts provided by the system, and users only need to give the name, issuance volume, management method and other definitions of the token to create a first-class asset.

The advantages of doing so include significantly reducing implementation complexity, unifying asset standards, and improving security. More importantly, the system is aware of token behavior, making it easier to implement lower-level economic incentives, fee calculation logic, and native cross-chain services.

UDT instantiated with FCA has native cross-chain functionality. This cross-chain protocol can be used between Huobi public chain and its side chain, as well as between Huobi public chain and Nervos CKB public chain to achieve decentralized cross-chain.

Huobi public chain uses a decentralized relay method to transmit cross-chain proofs. The relayer can be a side chain validator or other third-party users. Side chains can achieve direct cross-chain functions without relying on Huobi public chain or Nervos CKB.

Users can deploy smart contracts in two ways. The first is to compile the contract into RISC-V code and dynamically deploy it on the chain. The second is to use the Rust language to implement native code to deploy native contracts. Native contracts bypass the interpretation and execution process of the virtual machine and directly access system resources, which has more efficient performance.

Huobi Chain is expected to launch the official chain in mid-2020 and is currently in early development. Design documents and implementation codes will change frequently.

"Issues such as the operating efficiency of the public chain and how to regulate on-chain businesses have restricted the application of blockchain technology in the financial field. Huobi Public Chain is a world-class public chain developed by a Chinese team and was born for financial applications. It will improve the operating efficiency and reduce costs of the traditional financial industry under supervision; at the same time, it will improve asset circulation and transaction efficiency." said Li Lin, founder of Huobi Group.

Huobi Group hopes to create an infrastructure that conforms to financial behavior habits, focuses on providing financial services, and builds financial services through the high-performance support of the Huobi public chain, open multi-chain architecture, open identity authentication, trusted financial data oracles, and direct application optimization for the financial market.

It is worth mentioning that Huobi Chain is the world's first public chain to achieve regulatory compatibility and is currently applying for FATF-related patents. Many well-known traditional financial institutions have also participated in the creation of Huobi Chain, and are jointly building Huobi Chain into a blockchain infrastructure that can be used by the global mainstream financial market and the "Belt and Road" initiative.

Trust is generated from the PoW consensus and passed up layer by layer until it is actually applied. Huobi Chain will strictly follow the spirit of blockchain decentralization and consensus protocol, and strive to build an infrastructure that efficiently serves global technology finance.