Arweave, a blockchain network for permanent data storage, has launched a whole new approach to smart contracts.
In short, smart contracts on Arweave, like current website code, will be managed by users' computers rather than the blockchain itself. Released Thursday, SmartWeave is an approach to smart contracts that allows the blockchain to dispense with gas costs and requires only the execution of a smart contract code as often as necessary and not by each node of the network.
“SmartWeave is a new intelligent contract language environment built on top of the Arweave network,” said Sam Williams of Arweave to CoinDesk. "It uses this new type of evaluation called" lazy evaluation "to shift the load for calculating the execution of smart contracts from network nodes to users of the smart contract."
It's like home cooked pizza versus Pizza Hut. Arweave keeps the data ready, available and precise (in the freezer); user machines n ' have need to give meaning to the data (cook) when and only when they are needed.
Lazy evaluation checks the data and, in particular, when each piece of data has entered the system.
"The key thing that Arweave offers you is the ability to say that everything that has gone through the system has a time order," said Williams.
As the perpetual problem of Ethereum with front-running on decentralized exchanges (DEX) illustrates , the reliable establishment of the order of events is one of the most important works that decentralized systems must carry out.
That said, it is not important that each node on a network accurately checks the rendering of each digital document. Just like every computer that opens a website interprets its HTML and JavaScript locally, Arweave requires that users' computers process information, not the network itself. This logic makes sense because Arweave is basically designed to be a new type of Internet.
"Arweave as the base protocol is very much focused on decentralized and standalone web services," said Williams.
Entering a space similar to that of Blockstack, Arweave offers a kind of Internet to which users connect directly. Once a wallet has connected to Arweave, it can move around in all kinds of applications without needing to connect to it individually. Williams hopes that this will create interesting new experiences that we can only partially imagine now.
The main added value of Arweave is the creation of a system in which data loaded on the network can be stored there at an affordable price, forever.
What it can do
Many apps have already been designed for Arweave, but SmartWeave will open up a new level of functionality, both because of its functionality and the language it runs on.
"If you know JavaScript, you can write it immediately," said Williams. "I would expect to see CAD in the next few weeks."
Williams gave a simple example of a potential CAD. Imagine a blogging platform based on Arweave, like Medium, that anyone could use but whose prized first page was controlled by a committee (it's the CAD). Read more: OpenLaw launches the first “legal DAO” for distributed venture capital investments
Each member of the committee would have a kind of governance token that would allow them to vote on the first page. Each time each of them opened Arweave and voted for the messages, it was saved as data on the channel.
Each terminal that opened the blog simply looked at the votes and used it to build the home page that each user sees when they first visit the blog home page.
Arweave has a few examples of ready-to-use applications, such as basic ERC-20 modules and non-fungible tokens (NFT) which will be easy for developers to adopt.
High tension
The limitations really come from smart contracts when processing moves out of the chain.
"What this means in practice is that smart contracts can involve exceptionally large volumes of work," said Williams. “It wouldn't really be possible in a normal smart contract system like Ethereum .”
After that, as developers begin to realize more potential for Arweave, Williams expects people to start connecting machine learning and artificial intelligence to SmartWeave smart contracts. By removing network processing, considerably more powerful types of computing can be used without increasing costs or obstructing the blockchain.
There is another advantage here: security.
As a plethora of new smart base layer contracts have proliferated, there have also been a multitude of new smart contract languages ??designed to be more secure for everyone. Since Solidity, there has since been Pact by Kadena, Clarity by Blockstack and Cadence by Dapper Labs, among others.
Said Williams:
"It basically allows you to execute arbitrary code so you don't have to have as many security checks and safety harnesses. Because the problem you face on a normal smart contract system is that as a smart contract developer, I can get every node on the network to execute my code, and that means that the code absolutely cannot be allowed to be malicious. But with something on SmartWeave, you don't need those safety rings. "
Knots don't do all that work. As on the Web, the user must trust the code that will be executed, but the whole blockchain does not need to protect itself against each smart contract.
"I think there will be a later wave when people start to realize that the extra computing power that SmartWeave allows you to access unlocks a lot of things that you simply couldn't have built before" said Williams.
