There are already the Internet, the mobile internet, artificial intelligence … Then in the Science & Technology industry, will the next technique dividend be the blockchain?
Perhaps nobody will believe it, but nobody is willing to miss it. What if this is the next grand decade?
www.heronode.io
Driven by a mix of panic and a sense of opportunity, in the end of 2017 “blockchain,” right after artificial intelligence, has become the most remarkable object of attention. The present imagination for blockchain now reflects that prevalent in 2016, when no single application of blockchain was made though the new technology seemed almighty. The difference lies in that our perception radius now has been enlarged after the surge of share price of bitcoin and ICO, and with the intelligent contract of ethereum, blockchain has already entered the 2.0 era, diversifying the applications built on the chains.
Presently, there appears a few relatively mature public blockchains such as Qtum, Bytom, and antshares. However, as an article on 36Kr reported, when developing the blockchain-based decentralized application (DApp), the developer faces a series of obstacles like low-performance, high threshold for C-end users, and high cost. Apart from these technical shortcomings, there is the problem of shortage of talents for public blockchain technology, and a severe scarcity of technicians who understand the blockchain bottom development will hinder the building-up of application.
Now the white paper of Hero Node will explain the technical threshold for developing DApp:
First, we face the interdisciplinary feature of blockchain bottom technology, which involve knowledge or techniques like basic programming, cryptology, distributed consistent protocol, point-to-point network communications and various consensus algorithms (please refer to the official website of bitcoin or the Bitcoin White Paper).
Second, we face the diversity of development languages of public blockchains. Bitcoin employs C++ language is employed to program the bitcoin; in order to attract more technicians to participate in, ethereum has several different versions like go and C++; and antshares employs C#. If you want to program DApp on different public blockchains, you have to familiarize with related languages. Usually, one developer is versed at only one language, so he would choose the public blockchain based on the language he is proficient at rather than based the features of the chain.
Thirdly, most of the current DApp provide external service through PC-port website or intelligent contract-defined interface interchange. The popularizing rate of mobile port is still low due to the incomplete ecology at present.
Hero Node intends to lower the threshold of developers’ engaging in decentralized application through the establishment of a trans-public blockchain and trans-platform plan.
Liu Guoping, the founder of Hero Node, believes that whoever that can solve the development problems of DApp will take control of the next decade. He introduces that, based on Hero platform, developers don’t need to understand the underlying structure of blockchain or the development language of the mobile port to establish the DApp of decentralization, ethereum, IPFS or other public blockchains based on Qtum Blockchain that could operate on terminal platforms such as iOS, Android and HTML5.
Liu Guoping introduces that Hero Node is a converging meshed network, with nodes that could synchronize all the blocks of public blockchain and let all the public chains be in the same node, thus enhancing the speed of inquiring information on the blockchain. Meanwhile, Hero Node packages the achievable operations on the public blockchains into different kinds of API, that is, centralized operations such as inquiry, transaction, payment and contract. And developers could visit all the public blockchains through API. Externally, developers only need to know these ports to fulfill the development of DApp, among which the ports of contract are more complicated and teams provide different contract templates based on different scenes.
In this way, developers do not need to be proficient in the agreements and base course of all kinds of blockchains, which solves the limitation of the selection of public blockchains due to the variety of development languages, as mentioned in the beginning of the passage. Developers could choose public blockchain according to different scenes. Liu Guoping cites an example that daily operations could be put on blockchains with less value, while more valuable operations should be put on blockchains with higher values. Hero Node will at least support major public blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin, ethereum and Qtum Blockchain, and support the development of Javascript.
Application of Blockchain Establish trans-public blockchain DApp development platform, Hero Node wishes to lower the development threshold.
Schematic Diagram of Hero Node Establishment
When visiting specific public blockchain through API, the information on this blockchain are ensured to be decentralized. But how to ensure the authenticity and credibility of the transmission of trans-blockchain information with the current design of trans-blockchain. Liu Guoping claims that Hero Node’s port could be deemed as a middleware that connects both ends, one connecting all kinds of public blockchains and the other one connecting the storage service based on IPFS distributed file storage system. The interaction methods and business logic between different public blockchains, as well as other files and abstracts, will be stored and published on IPFS and IPNS, and then generate a broadcast address on the blockchain. This guarantees that the logical relations between different blockchains are traceable and could be made public.
Within such a structure, as Guoping suggests, applications can choose to store data such as the routine operations, which has no need of being synchronized on the whole network, into IPFS, and to synchronize the dealings on other public blockchains.
Since the industry of blockchain is at the initial stage of prospering, it is hard to find a company identical to Hero Node, but some that overlap in conceptions are indeed existing. In the area of lowering the development threshold of DApp, those devoting themselves to similar causes are BlockStack, a blockchain browser, and ArcBlock, a DApp development & deployment that has been reported by 36Kr. Those that are devoted to solving the problem of blockchain storage are IPFS (FileCoin), StorJ and Sia (SiaCoin), while EtherParty is one example that works on the blockchain smart contract template.
The advantages of Hero Node probably lies in its deeper understanding of developers. For four years or so, the team has been devoted to building the development framework for the cross-platform applications, which was programmed with Javascript and could run on Android, iOS and H5. Hero Node, as a decentralized node, can be independently deployed by the developers soon; as planned, you will see the launch of this program this April.
Presently, the team of Hero Node is made up of 12 members, most of whom come from Dianrong, a company specialized at financial technology.
Liu Guoping, the founder of Hero Node, earlier participated in bitcoin mining and served in a few Internet companies such as Wind Information, The9 Limited and Dianrong. He was then responsible for technology development, and participated in the scene development for blockchain application when he worked at Dianrong.
Carl Zhu, the cross-platform framework writer from Hero, has a three-year working experience at Ethereum development, and served at some well-known companies like PAX and Dianrong.
Hero Node now has completed the angel-round financing, and investors include Quanta Fund, and Xinghe Fund founded by Guo Yuhang, who is also the founder and co-chairman of Dianrong. Its consulting team include Wang Yuehua, the partner of DFJ DragonFund, and Liu Jiarui, the researcher at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society.