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Posted on Jan 10, 2023Read on Mirror.xyz

Future of Public Blockchain: New Public Blockchain Inventory in 2022

In retrospect, 2022 was destined to be an extraordinary year. The same was true of the encryption market. Because of the declining market in the encryption field, the cognition of encryption in severe winter and the long-term bear markets has become the consensus in 2022. However, in this year’s capital flow in the primary market, we could observe that the investment institutions mainly focused on the new public blockchain.

After entering the multi-chain era, new public blockchains, optimized based on Layer1 and Layer2 have been born, with nearly 30+ new public blockchains in 2022 alone. Among these new public blockchains, some well-known institutions such as A16Z, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, etc. also participated in the investment; the new public blockchain in the last round of the bull market took over the overflow funds of Ethereum and gained a good increase. At the same time, this track has an extremely high elimination rate. From the current market demand, DeFi, NFT and other concepts and applications are developing quickly, thus putting forward higher requirements on the public blockchains.

Therefore, these new public blockchains are constantly making innovations and efforts around the “safe, decentralized and high-performance” impossible trinity, so as to bring more possibilities for the track of public blockchain through conception based on different structural logics and application scenarios.

Starting from the logical architecture of blockchain, the public blockchains can be divided into three layers: Layer 0, Layer 1 and Layer 2. Specifically speaking:

Layer 0 corresponds to the “transmission layer” where the Internet and hardware are connected. It enables the mutual interaction of blockchains. For example, Polkadot and Cosmos have both created cross-chain interoperable ecosystems at this level. In addition, because they are at the lowest level, as long as they are built with the same layer 0, developers don’t need to start from scratch over and over again, and many functions can be accessed at any time.

Layer 1 corresponds to the “data layer, network layer, consensus layer and incentive layer”. This is where technologies such as data processing, transaction and block dispute resolution are operated and processed on the chain. Ethereum is the most famous public blockchain, but the most important problem facing this public blockchain is how to overcome the “impossible trinity dilemma”.

Layer 2 corresponds to the “application layer and contract layer”. This is a third-party integration used in conjunction with Layer 1, mainly to improve the scalability and throughput of blockchain. At present, Layer 2 technical solutions include State Channel, Rollups and Plasma. Among them, the Rollups scheme is favored by the Ethereum community, which is divided into two types: Zero-knowledge Rollups and Optimistic Rollups.

veDAO Research screened some public blockchain projects that received financing in 2022 for summary and analysis, most of which were Layer 1 public blockchains, so as better to understand the characteristics and differences of these public blockchains.

Aptos

Aptos is a high-performance Layer 1 public blockchain created by a former Meta engineer. It uses move programming language and focuses on security, scalability and scalability. At the end of January last year, Diem was sold by Meta, and some core members left to form a team to develop Aptos public blockchain based on Diem's open-source code. Compared with the existing public blockchains on the market, Aptos is characterized by adopting a brand-new development language Move, which was originally a programming language designed for Diem project development. Aptos achieves high TPS through Block-STM and allowing new nodes to participate in state synchronization, and pays attention to the security, scalability and scalability of blockchain. Another feature of Aptos is that it doesn't force users to hold Aptos. If users don't have local currency, they can use other non-local currencies to pay gas fee.

Aptos completed the financing of $200 million led by a16z in March, 2022, wherein the participants included Tiger Global, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, FTX Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, PayPal Ventures, etc. Aptos completed the financing of $150 million in July 2022, with FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto leading the investment. Other investors included Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures and Superscrypt, etc.

Sui

The Layer 1 public block chain built by Mysten Labs, founded by a former Meta engineer, adopts Move programming language, and the consensus mechanism is PoS. It focuses on high TPS and low latency, mainly to improve composability and build dynamic NFT for metauniverse applications including games, social and business.

With $36 million in Round A financing, the main investors referred to a16z, NFX, Scribble Ventures, Redpoint, Lightspeed, Electric Capital, Samsung NEXT, Slow Ventures, Standard Crypto and Coinbase Ventures. Led by FTX Ventures in investment, Round B was expected to raise a total of $236 million.

Linera

Layer 1 blockchain, founded by former Meta engineers and former Zcash researchers, aims at low latency and linear scalability. In addition to the employees who have ever participated in Diem and Novi in Meta, the team also includes former employees of Zcash. Different from the first two projects, in the published information of Linera project, there is no explicit mention of using Move, only the Rust-based language for development.

On June 29, Linera completed the $6 million seed round financing led by a16z, wherein the participants included Cygni Capital, Kima Ventures and Tribe Capital.

Aleo

Aleo team members originally proposed Zexe scheme in 2018 and published papers, intending to fill up the market vacancy of privacy and programmability in a new way. Zexe, the abbreviation of zero-knowledge execution, is to achieve transaction verification by any person in a very short time through offline calculation first, and then online transaction that can prove the calculation correctness without disclosing the details of calculation, thus supporting many applications to run simultaneously in large volumes. In this way, the scalability and privacy property of the blockchain can be improved. In addition, Aleo has created its own programming language Leo, which will make it easier for developers to build decentralized and private applications.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) was the leading investor in the Company’s earlier Round A financing. SFTBY.US Vision Fund and other investors made a $70 million in Round B+ financing for Aleo. This round of financing follows the Round B financing with an oversubscribed $200 million, wherein Kora Capital and Softbank Vision Fund 2 are the leading investors.

Portalverse

As the computing power infrastructure of Metaverse, PortalVerse aims to jointly build a distributed edge cloud rendering network with GPU miners, 3A game content providers and player communities through the groundbreaking decentralized cross-stream cloud rendering verification consensus protocol (PoSR), so that anyone can use any device to enter the truly immersive virtual world anytime and anywhere.

Portalverse Network completed the seed round financing in millions of dollars, which was invested by Big Brain Holdings, Cogitent Ventures, Octopus Venture Dao, 2Moon Capital and individual angel investors.

AltLayer

An Ethereum expansion startup was built by Yaoqi Jia, who previously co-founded Zilliqa blockchain and served as its CTO. It is characterized by providing an application-specific chain, that is, a blockchain customized for a single application. Instead of building on blockchain such as Ethereum, application developers build their own blockchain from scratch through platforms such as AltLayer.

ALT completed a $7.2 million seed round financing through SAFT sale with Polychain Capital, Jump Crypto and Breyer Capital as the joint leading investors therein. In addition, Gavin Wood, Balaji Srinivasan, co-founders of Ethereum, Sean Neville, former CTO of Coinbase, co-founder of Circle, Kain Warwick and Jordan Momtazi, co-founders of Synthetix and Bodhi Ventures, etc. participated in the investment.

Espresso Systems

Espresso aims to optimize the privacy and scalability of public block chain through zero-knowledge proof technology, which is a Layer 1 blockchain that combines proof of rights (PoS) consensus and ZK-Rollup mechanism. In addition, Espresso has developed Configurable Asset Privacy for Ethereum (CAPE), a privacy application that can run on any EVM blockchain. With the application, the asset creators can provide customized privacy guarantees for users.

Espresso Systems completed the financing of $32 million, with Greylock Partners and Electric Capital as the leading investor, Sequoia Capital, Blockchain Capital and Slow Ventures participated in the investment.

Evmos

Evmos is an L1 universal public blockchain compatible with Ethereum smart contract that uses the cosmos underlying technology (Tendermint Core). Evmos can integrate Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains into Cosmos, which means that Fantom, Avalanche, Harmonry and other chains can integrate assets into Cosmos ecosystem through Evmos. Decentralized applications, tokens and NFT based on EVM can be bridged to Cosmos ecosystem.

Evmos will also support users of IBC chain to access the types of protocols seen on Ethereum, including but not limited to decentralized exchanges, lending agreements, NFT application programs, etc.

Kujira

Cosmos Ecology’s Layer 1 new public blockchain is committed to building a competitive environment of Dapp balanced decentralized finance for ordinary encrypted users. The Kujira team has established an efficient dApp to carry assets from 17 blockchain in the whole Cosmos.

Celestia

Layer 1 modular blockchain network that supports scalable and secure Web3 applications. The CEO is not only a doctor of blockchain expansion from University College London, but also the co-founder of Chainspace acquired by Facebook.

Celestia completed the seed round financing in $1.5 million, with investors such as Interchain Foundation, Binance Labs, Maven 11 Capital, KR1, etc.

Polygon Avail

Polygon Avail is a blockchain that records the blockchain transactions and proves the data availability. Focusing on data availability and sorting, it represents a key component of Polygon modular chain design vision.

Sei Network

The Layer 1 blockchain is built with Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, and possesses a built-in central limit order book (CLOB) module.

Metabit

Metabit is a high-performance commercial application public blockchain that integrates decentralized algorithm, smart contract, DeFi, NFT and other blockchain technologies, and faces the meta-universe scene. It is committed to building the underlying operating system of the future meta-universe so as to provide the standard commercial ecological bottom layer for future meta-universe applications, and become a high-performance Web3.0 public blockchain, thus carrying decentralized financing, socializing, e-commerce, search, storage, meta-universe and other applications.

Metabit completed the seed round financing in $2 million, with Golden Bridge Capital and Eagle Capital as the leading investors, MCA, DG Capital and Tiger Venture as the participants.

Rubix

Rubix, a Layer 1 blockchain protocol for peer-to-peer data transmission and transaction, was built by Singapore Blockchain Association (BAS). It recently announced that it has received an investment of $100 million from LDA Capital.

Klaytn

Klaytn, a public blockchain developed by GroundX, a subsidiary of Kaokao, a large Korean communication company, in June, 2019, is a service-centered enterprise-level distributed trust blockchain platform for providing an accessible user experience and development environment. In March 2019, it completed ICO financing of $90 million. At present, its diluted market value of tokens is about $10 billion at present.

Klaytn, backed by Kakao, has strong resources and innate development advantages. Klaytn was initially positioned as an enterprise-level and service-centered platform, which combined the characteristics of public blockchain (decentralized data and distributed governance) and private chain (low latency and high scalability) through “mixed” design. Klaytn also signed the Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) project with the Bank of Korea.

At present, Klaytn has opened the Klaytn2.0 era and turned its service target from enterprises to everyone. It is positioned to create a “meta-universe blockchain”. In addition, its main ecological projects are concentrated on AAA games, P2E games, NFT and DeFi services that provide support for meta-universe business.

Summary

Aptos, Sui and Linera are often discussed together, because the co-founders of these three projects are all from Meta, and have worked in Diem and Novi. Diem is a stable currency project of the original facebook, formerly known as Libra. Starting in 2019 as a payment transaction project in digital currency, it was transformed into a stable currency for regulatory reasons and renamed Diem. However, having not been well launched, it was sold by meta for nearly 200 million in January this year. Novi is another project of meta, engaged in digital wallet, also a pilot project. Just like Diem, it has not been well developed. Most of the project members of Diem and Novi choose to start their own businesses, so there are three public blockchains including Aptos, Sui and Linera. In addition, because most of the co-founders, software engineers and researchers have worked for Diem or Novi, these three blockchain projects are also called “Meta public blockchains”.

These three public block chain projects are all aimed at solving impossible trinity. Both Aptos and Sui use Move as the programming language. Compared with solidity, less flexibility brings considerable security improvement. It uses the consensuses such as Byzantine consensus or improved Byzantine consensus. However, the use of Move also brings a problem, namely owing to strong ecology of Ethereum, most dapps choose solidity for development. In addition, most public block chains also want to use compatible Ethereum virtual machines to gain the overflow value of Ethereum. Are developers willing to rewrite programs in new languages?

Looking at the development of the three projects, Aptos is the best winner because of the earlier time and the incentive of the test network, followed by Sui. Linera is not discussed frequently because of its late start, whereas these two projects will not be weaker than Aptos in the future development. Most investors are the same as Solana, which is not so good.

In addition, Aleo based on zero-knowledge proof is also worthy of attention. A big challenge for blockchain protocols is the trade-off between privacy and programmability. In the whole privacy network, the most important thing is to block identity and block transactions. While Aleo meets the demand for programmable privacy through zkCloud system: zkCloud adopts a peer-to-peer and decentralized privacy computing mode, in which the blocked identities can interact directly (such as asset transfer) or programmatically (through smart contracts).

Under the background of multi-chain coexistence, the differentiated competition of new public blockchain becomes more and more obvious. According to these public blockchain projects, the public blockchain with outstanding performance since the beginning of 2022 has several characteristics:

  • Old projects with sufficient technical precipitation;

  • As a highly destructive NFT, the public blockchain that gives priority to NFT application scenarios is well popular;

  • Vertical application scenarios, whether relying on the multi-dimensional and all-around coverage brought by the big platform, or anchoring a specific subdivision application in the Web3 ecosystem for ecology, are all exerted from this angle.

At present, all kinds of public blockchains are still being explored. The public blockchain track is still waiting for Web3 to come practically. Although it will take time for the encryption field to get out of the severe winter, public blockchains are actively sowing seeds and waiting for spring.

🔴All contents are NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE🔴

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