What is a virtual machine?
A virtual machine is a complete computer system with full hardware system functionality simulated by software that runs in a completely isolated environment. What can be done on a physical computer can be done in a virtual machine. When you create a virtual machine on a computer, you need to use part of the hard disk and memory capacity of the physical machine as the hard disk and memory capacity of the virtual machine. Each virtual machine has a separate CMOS, hard disk, and operating system that can operate the virtual machine as if it were a physical machine.
Vm (Virtual Machine) refers to a virtual machine, which is simply the execution engine of smart contracts.
FVM refers to the virtual machine on the public chain of the IPFS incentive layer.
Filecoin's mission is to create a distributed, efficient, and robust foundation for human information that has changed the basic business case and cost structure of storage providers in today's economy.
On October 27, the 7th Wanxiang Blockchain Global Summit was held at the W Bund Hotel in Shanghai. IPFS and Juan Benet, the official founder of the Protocol Lab, introduced the progress and development plan of the first anniversary of the launch of the IPFS incentive layer through live streaming.
Founder of Juan Benet Protocol Labs
Web3 stands for the next generation of the Internet, and soon computing will change all species, and now the computing infrastructure powers tens of billions of devices and billions of people around the world, and we now use all kinds of software. We hold a variety of hackathons around the world, and if you're interested, you can take a look at the hackathons to be held in November and December. Of the 4 accelerators this year, 60 projects have graduated, and these 60 projects will build Web3.0-era apps based on IPFS. Web 3.0 does create new infrastructure that puts security above scalability, but in the future, we're going to push further on scalability to ensure a Web 2.0-like experience.
Web3 stands for the next generation of the Internet, and soon computing will change all species, and now the computing infrastructure powers tens of billions of devices and billions of people around the world, and we now use all kinds of software. Web 3.0 has seen a lot of changes around the world, here to share the IPFS and IPFS incentive layer, we have implemented the Internet P2P, that is, peer-to-peer. Now around the world, we have hundreds of millions of websites of all kinds, as well as all kinds of development applications. The IPFS incentive layer is a decentralized storage network that primarily stores people's information. This network supports our network through a series of storage providers, that is, providers of storage capabilities. The IPFS incentive layer is the storage proof chain of Web 3.0, and it is also the largest storage network in the storage track, which has a competition with a centralized cloud storage platform, and is also the storage base of each Web3.0, and these systems have stored data in the IPFS incentive layer.
In addition, the IPFS incentive layer has many applications and has been supported by some applications, such as NFT support and storage for other applications. Here is a recommendation of NFT storage, which is a very simple system, and it also stores a large number of NFTs around the world, there are currently more than 6500 customers in NFT STORAGE stored more than 6.5 million NFTs, that is, most of the world's NFTs exist in it. It is supported by IPFS and deployed worldwide.
The following is a brief review of some of the important details that Juan said at this conference:
1. The IPFS incentive layer has many applications and is supported by some applications, such as NFT support and storage for other applications.
2. Many developer platforms are also emerging, such as Textile, ESTUARY, Huddle.
3. Many smart contracts in other networks can directly call the contracts of the IPFS incentive layer.
4. On the browser and mobile side, there are more than 250 million active users worldwide, which is a good access point for all Web 3.0s.
5. Build a metacosm on top of the IPFS excitation layer.
6. Of the 4 accelerators this year, 60 projects have graduated, and these 60 projects will build Web 3.0-era apps based on IPFS.
7. The community is very concerned about the current group line to the FVM, which is compatible with WASM and mainly has a better model for cross-chain computing.
Filecoin has been accumulating power for a long time, and the FVM with the highest attention from the community, why does the protocol lab attach so much importance to it?
1. Behind the FVM is the dispute between the public chain tracks
The launch of the FVM is not a temporary intention, behind which is an increasingly fierce public chain track dispute.
Since 2020, the number of DeFi projects, NFT projects, GameFi games, and meta-universe projects has increased rapidly, allowing the scale of mainstream public chain assets to be enlarged, and also allowing the rapid development of emerging public chains, cross-chain projects, and Ethereum Layer2 ecosystems, and promoting the advent of the multi-chain era.
In the era of multi-chain, each unique product has intensified the cross-chain demand of users, and more and more technology developers in the market are complying with this trend and seeking better cross-chain solutions between various homogeneous public chains, heterogeneous public chains, Ethereum Layer2 and other projects. In this series of cross-chain solutions, the technical improvement and application development of virtual machines have become the next technical focus.
EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) is known for being able to execute code of arbitrary algorithmic complexity and is of great interest to many technology developers. The advantages of EVM include lower Gas fees, faster settlement, and the same address format as Ethereum, making the operating environment more user-friendly. Moreover, after the public chain is compatible with EVMs, it can quickly copy the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem and expand its own DeFi ecosystem. Therefore, many public chains are actively compatible with EVMs to obtain more developers and users and accelerate their own development.
This trend continues and intensifies in 2021, and the current Ethereum EVM is gradually becoming a global "standard", and compatible EVMs are becoming the standard for high-performance public chains. From the perspective of progress, the compatibility of public chains with EVMs has basically landed. However, EVM still has some limitations, such as: EVM in the contract call, Gas restriction built-in operations lead to vulnerabilities and other issues are still problematic, which also derived from the new concept of "EVM system improvement", IPFS incentive layer FVM is one of them.
2. The role of FVM in the IPFS incentive layer
As one of the public chains of distributed storage heads, the IPFS incentive layer is also actively adapting to the new cross-chain environment. Since the beginning of this year, IPFS incentive layer official and founder Juan has shown a high degree of attention to virtual machines in the signals transmitted to the outside world, and launched FVM.
The concept of FVM was first proposed in FIP0013: FVM is designed according to the heuristics of traditional virtual machines, and its architecture can implement multiple operations in an isolated manner at the base layer.
In the Protocol Lab's Blog on October 25, the future vision for FVM is elaborated: the goal of FVM is to enable users to deploy their own smart contracts on the IPFS incentive layer chain.
Once the IPFS incentive layer network has its own virtual machine FVM, it means that the IPFS incentive layer will have full smart contract functions, at that time, the FVM will play the following role in the IPFS incentive layer network:
(1) Establish the underlying business through smart contracts.
For example, build an automated storage provider credit system, then build a distributed automatic storage matching market based on credit points, and unlock the verification problem of real data storage based on the automatic storage matching market.
(2) Reduce the trouble of upgrading the functions of the IPFS incentive layer.
Before there was a smart contract, the establishment of the underlying business or function of the IPFS incentive layer required a network upgrade, that is, a new version of Lauts or Venus was required. But with smart contracts, the functionality of the IPFS incentive layer network can be implemented through contracts. In other words, smart contracts reduce the hassle of upgrading the functions of the IPFS incentive layer.
(3) All data-strongly related applications can be implemented in the IPFS incentive layer.
Data is the most basic asset of the IPFS incentive layer, all data-related applications, in the IPFS incentive layer of this system can be implemented in a decentralized system, for example: most of the current NFTs are stored in the IPFS network, then an IPFS-based NFT platform will be a completely unified platform.
The goal of FVM is to enable users to deploy their own smart contracts on-chain and perform on-chain computations. It is conceivable that in the future, under the FVM, the data replication work will be completed on the chain, reducing the cost of data transfer between the storage provider and the user. Moreover, with FVM, it is also possible to bring a smarter storage and retrieval market and enable computation and storage to occur simultaneously.
3. The relationship between FVM and EVM
There is no doubt that EVMs dominate the blockchain smart contract space. After all, the Ethereum ecosystem has become the industry standard. Logically, wouldn't it be better to use the EVM directly?
Non also! What the IPFS incentive layer has to do is to be COMPATIBLE with EVMs, that is, compatible with Solidity, so that smart contracts running on EVMs can be taken and used directly without changing or changing the code as little as possible. In this way, the IPFS excitation layer is not to rebuild an EVM, but to make an EVM that is compatible with the EVM but different from the EVM.
In addition, wasm (WebAssembly) is gradually popular and recognized, and there is a trend to become the next generation of standards, so the IPFS incentive layer support WASM is basically a must, not to mention this wasm-based core multi-sum virtual machine can also achieve compatibility with EVM, such as: implement a cross-chain bridge with Ethereum and IPFS incentive layer, so that more interesting projects emerge.
4. Implementation of FVM
The implementation of the IPFS incentive layer is also a long-term road, and the support of the smart contract of the IPFS incentive layer is not achieved overnight, and the implementation of FVM is the same. But the IPFS incentive layer has also been actively discussing programmable contracts over the past few months, and the community is also paying close attention to FVM. In November, there will also be a lot of official EVM-related things launched, and there will be continuous application of projects that appear on Ethereum and other networks.
Nowadays, the IPFS incentive layer is constantly promoting the implementation of FVM, and is also implementing the function of smart contracts, prompting FVM and smart contracts to provide secure, efficient, low-cost and permanent storage for various blockchain applications.
If the goal of FVM can be achieved, the IPFS incentive layer will truly have the FVM, supporting a sufficiently open and powerful smart contract, when developers can build their own applications on the IPFS incentive layer smart contract, such as DeFi, NFT, GameFi, metaverse, etc., which will greatly promote the prosperity and development of the IPFS incentive layer ecology. And when the ecology becomes more and more prosperous, the probability of the birth of ecological giants will be greater (for example, DeFi is based on the Ethereum network).
In addition, when there are more and more applications on the IPFS incentive layer network, the data stored in the network will continue to increase, and its value will become higher and higher, and the IPFS incentive layer can truly achieve the goal of "becoming a distributed network for storing important information in human society".
Value display, unlimited future. Let's wait for the future of the IPFS incentive layer and witness more possibilities!
Thank you for reading, if you find the article helpful to you, please pay attention; Han Rui Technology IPFS
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