First of all what is blockchain?
You might say: a block in a blockchain consists of two components: the block header and the transaction data associated with it.Blocks are validated by "full nodes", which parse and calculate the entire block data to ensure that transactions are valid and users do not send more coins than their account balances.
If we compare the current blockchain to a restaurant, it would look like this: the restaurant has only one waiter, who needs to be responsible for all the work involved in operation and management, such as ordering, cooking and bookkeeping at the same time. If this is a street-side bun store, there is no big problem with such an operation model, but if it is a CBD Internet celebrity restaurant, the restaurant may close down in a few days, after all, no customer will wait for a day or two for a meal.
This is actually the problem faced by many Layer 1 (Monolithic Blockchain).Taking Ethereum as an example, all transactions, settlements, and block generation are completed on the same chain, and users can only settle their transactions after the completion of the previous block.Therefore, today, when Ethernet is massively popular, the problem of network clogging and soaring fees emerges. In order to get their transactions included in the block as early as possible, people have to start expensive 「gas war」and the transaction speed becomes slower and slower, which is what we know as 「scalability problem」.
The developers gave some solutions
The one we are most familiar with is of course changing the consensus mechanism.Public chains such as Avalanche and BSC have adopted the new Proof of Stake (PoS) to improve the settlement and block generation speed of the network, and thus have stronger scalability.But in the final analysis, these blockchains just replace their waiters with robots, and there is no innovation in the operating model.
Another solution is Rollups, which reduces the burden on the public chain by moving transactions off-chain.But it should be noted that the settlement and block generation are still completed by the underlying public chain. In other words, the restaurant just hired an additional waiter to take charge of ordering.So we will find that Ethereum Rollups still faces the problem of high gas, because it has to compete with non-Rollups applications.For example, in Arbitrum, the gas fee for the latest Swap also costs 0.2 USD.
So is there a better solution?In fact, we all know that the best way is division of labor and cooperation. Hire four waiters to be responsible for ordering, cooking, serving and keeping accounts, so that each waiter can give full play to his expertise and the efficiency of the restaurant can be greatly improved.
What is Modular Blockchain?
Usually we divide the blockchain into the following four layers:
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Execution - Responsible for transaction calculations to update state.
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Settlement - Responsible for safety and objective finality.
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Consensus - Transaction ordering.
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Data availability - Make sure that when new blocks are generated, all data is published.
First of all, we need to know that the so-called modularization is not a specific thing, it is a concept or design concept.
As we mentioned earlier, the current traditional L1 is a monolithic chain, which means that one chain implements the consensus, settlement, data availability and execution.In simple terms, the modular blockchain is to split the consensus, settlement, data availability and execution into a separate chain, so that each chain only needs to be responsible for its own transactions and return the results to the main chain, in order to truly reduce the cost of Gas At the same time, the scalability problem will be solved.Fuel is taking the execution layer out separately to handle the transaction processing work of the main chain.
Why do we expect Fuel?
Fuel is the fastest execution layer for the modular blockchain stack.
Fuel Labs is the foundation for building Fuel, which is the fastest modular execution layer (MEL). Initially they deployed Fuel V1 as L2 of Ethereum, focusing on stablecoin payments, because stablecoins consumed the largest Gas at that time（It is interesting to note that this is the first optimistic rollup of the Ethereum mainnet that predates Arbitrum and optimism）。However, due to the limited use scenarios of Fuel V1, Turing-complete smart contracts cannot be built, and the team started working on Fuel V2 soon after（That is, the current modular execution layer）
Fuel is constantly recruiting the brightest minds in the blockchain to build and develop, and now has close to 75 team members and contributors, including some prominent blockchain development experts：John Adler（He is one of the architects of the optimistic rollup/Co-founder of Celestia and Fuel）、Nick Dodson（Fuellabs CEO/Former ConsenSys 16 employee）、Ruben Amar（More than 40k members super community leader\developer）、Emily Herbert（Sway Language Specialist）etc.
1.For developers: Fuel has three core pillars:
1.Parallel transaction execution
Fuel provides the ability to execute parallel transactions by using the UTXO model, which allows Fuel to use more threads and CPU cores (which is extremely important today when more and more processor threads are available), while in a monolithic chain, the extra threads and CPU are often idle, which is a huge waste of resources, so Fuel is able to provide more computational power and throughput than other Rollups, which gives Fuel unparalleled processing efficiency.
2.FuelVM
FuelVM is one of Fuel core innovations, specifically designed for fraud prevention.It takes the best from Evm, Solana, Btc and Cosmos and reduces the waste of traditional virtual machine architectures.On Fuel, any contract can mint native assets, similar to ETH in Ethereum, but there is only ETH as a native asset in Ethereum, and in FuelVM, developers can use simple codes to mint different native assets.
3.Sway and Forc (superior development experience)
Sway is a language for building smart contracts and applications on Fuel.It is different from other languages that create virtual machines first and then develop them, Sway is built together with FuelVM.We all know that because of the existence of EVM, most developers use Solidity at present, but the actual situation is that the development experience of using Solidity is very bad. Obviously, the most developers use it and its bad experience does not conflict. Fuel is primarily based on Rust, but retains and improves on the strengths of smart contract languages like Solidity, so the largest group of smart contract developers will easily use Sway.
Forc is the tool chain used in conjunction with Sway and developers can use Forc to get everything they need to create Sway applications.Fuel takes a curated, "batteries-included"-yet-modular approach to providing tooling, with a comprehensive, standardized, canonical set of tools that covers not only the lower levels of the stack (like protocol and VM implementations), but also the higher levels (such as package management, editor support, common-use plugins, and much more).
2.For users: Fuel is faster, safer and more flexible.
This topic is a cliché, almost all the new L1 \ L2 claim to be faster and safer, but after we delve deeper into it, we find it more or less unsatisfactory.
as the fastest modular execution layer, developers will get better optimization and performance by building and optimizing smart contracts using FuelVM, which is customized specifically for Fuel. The execution layer and the consensus & data layer are independently separated in the modularization, so each layer can independently provide easier tools for its own blockchain. In Fuel, there are programming languages Sway and Forc tools specially designed for virtual machines, which combine and improve mainstream development languages, so projects built on them will be safer and have higher performance. Coupled with the advantages of Fuel parallel transaction mode, the effect is stronger computing power and throughput.
(If you have time, I hope you can experience the Uni-like decentralized DEX built by the Fuel team using the Sway language: Swayswap）
For users, having parallel transactions gives Fuel faster speed and computing power, and Sway and Forc give Fuel the ability to deploy higher security and performance. All of these are specially designed instead of passively using other people's tools, which will make the ecological experience on Fuel more smooth and reliable in the future.
Speaking of flexibility, the word modular itself has the meaning of flexibility. Fuel is the fastest modular execution layer and a very flexible plug-and-play blockchain that can operate as an L1\L2\ sidechain as well as a state channel.
From the figure above, we can see that Fuel is a very flexible blockchain, although the team said that Fuel is currently positioned more as a high-performance execution layer to enhance existing blockchains. But as users, we can also expect Fuel to produce unexpected effects in certain specific scenarios.
Top Supporter of Fuel
Fuellabs announced 80M USD of support led by Blockchain Capital and Stratos, with additional support from CoinFund, Bain Capital Crypto, TRGC, Maven 11 Capital, Blockwall, Spartan, Dialectic, and ZMT.
2022 is a very difficult year for the entire world economy, and Chinese users are used to calling it a bear market. In this case, Fuellabs can raise 80 million US dollars, which is enough to show that not only developers, but also top investment institutions are very optimistic about Fuel and the field of modular blockchain.It also means that Fuel has more money to recruit more top talent and support more and better eco-projects than other blockchains.
Summary
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If you are a developer who understands EVM, then you can easily get started with FuelVM. The unrivaled developer experience powered by Sway and Forc makes your builds easier, safer, and more efficient.
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If you are a blockchain enthusiast, please continue to pay attention to Fuel and modular blockchains, and try products built on Fuel. Due to the convenience of development and the performance of Fuel itself, the ecology built on Fuel will give you a more perfect experience.
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About Us
Fuel is the fastest execution layer for the modular blockchain stack. Powerful and sleek, the technology enables parallel transaction execution, empowering developers with the highest flexible throughput and maximum security required to scale. Developers choose the FuelVM for its superior developer experience and the ability to go beyond the limitations of the EVM.