An article to understand the smart contracts in the Polkadot ecosystem

Polkadot is a heterogeneous multi-chain system developed based on the Substrate blockchain development framework. Substrate provides the necessary basic functional modules for the development of blockchains. Developers can use Substrate to build parallel chains for specific businesses.

As a relay chain, Polkadot does not support smart contracts itself, but Substrate provides a solution for adding smart contract functions to parachains. Its contract module supports Wasm smart contracts.

Smart contract language ink!

The smart contract platform in the Polkadot ecosystem is dominated by the Wasm virtual machine. From EVM to WebAssembly is the development trend of the smart contract virtual machine. ETH 2.0 will also support the Wasm virtual machine.

Fantom deploys smart contract monitoring system Watchdog: On October 27th, Fantom deployed an automated smart contract monitoring system called Watchdog to strengthen the security of decentralized applications on its blockchain. The Fantom Foundation said in a statement that the system was developed in partnership with blockchain security firm Debaub. Watchdog will automatically scan for issues with smart contracts in the Fantom ecosystem. Once a vulnerability is found, the security company Dedaub will notify the project party and assist the project party in analyzing risks, and support the project team to repair the vulnerability in a timely manner. [2022/10/27 11:50:04]

ink! is an embedded domain specific language (eDSL for short). It is a blockchain developed based on the Substrate blockchain development framework and provides a solution for writing Wasm smart contracts. ink! is built on the Rust language, follows the rules and syntax of the Rust language, and its design goals are friendly, concise and efficient.

Zapper announced that the Zapper V2 Beta test version is officially launched, and only supports users who meet the conditions: On July 13, the DeFi asset management agreement Zapper announced that the Zapper V2 Beta test version was officially launched. Users who meet the following two conditions will be eligible to participate: 1 . Any user who holds zapper NFT in Seasons1 or Seasons2; 2. Users who hold Zapper Community Call#36POAP. In addition, the beta version has a limited number of test users. [2022/7/13 2:09:30]

The ink! language consists of three abstraction layers, of which the Core layer contains the core functions for implementing smart contracts, and the Lang layer is based on the Core and Model layers. Most developers only need to use the Lang layer to write smart contract codes.

Raydium has launched the XTAG-USDC Fusion Pool: News on December 3, Solana-based on-chain order book AMM Raydium Protocol launched XTAG- USDC Fusion pool, the reward is XTAG. [2021/12/3 12:48:37]

Smart Contract vs Runtime Module

There are two different approaches to building decentralized applications with Substrate: Substrate Runtime modules and Substrate smart contracts.

MicroStrategy purchased more than 7,000 bitcoins again, and currently holds more than 120,000 bitcoins: On November 29, Micro Strategy CEO Michael Saylor announced that Micro Strategy purchased 7,002 bitcoins again with approximately $414.4 million in cash coins, with a unit price of $59,187. As of November 29, 2021, Micro Strategy owns 121,044 bitcoins worth a total of $3.57 billion at an average price of $29,534 per bitcoin. [2021/11/29 12:39:28]

Runtime module

The purpose of developing based on the Runtime module is to generate efficient and fast nodes, which provide an underlying access interface to the entire blockchain, can fully control the underlying logic of the blockchain, and can access any storage items in all modules, and Modify and control.

However, the runtime module has a high barrier to entry for developers, and low-level developers may build a blockchain with incorrect logic or poor error handling. At the same time, it does not provide transaction reversion protection, nor does it introduce a fee system to the calculations run by nodes. When developing the Runtime module, it is necessary to correctly evaluate each part of the Runtime logic and calculate the cost, so as to avoid being abused by saboteurs and damaging the entire blockchain network.

Smart Contract

Substrate smart contracts allow users to add business logic based on the core logic of the blockchain, while establishing a protection mechanism against saboteurs.

Smart contracts are inherently safer for blockchains, because smart contracts cannot directly modify the storage state of the blockchain or other smart contracts, and its capabilities are limited to modifying its own state and making external calls to other smart contracts or runtime functions. Both calculation and storage state in the process of executing smart contracts will be charged, which ensures that blockchain resources will not be abused and stored infinitely. When the execution of the smart contract fails due to various factors, the smart contract will not update the state, and the transaction will be rolled back. Of course, these management overheads will reduce the efficiency of smart contract execution and increase the cost of operation.

Choice of Coinversation

Both the Substrate Runtime module and the Substrate smart contract are tools for solving problems. As for which tool to choose to solve the problem, it depends on the needs of the problem itself and the cost of development, deployment and maintenance.

Coinversation Protocol is a synthetic asset issuance agreement and contract trading platform. The main functional modules of the entire system are: synthetic assets minted with mortgages, decentralized contract exchanges, mortgage pools, fee pools, oracles, and liquidity mining. Among them, Coinpro.MintC (minting center for minting and burning cUSD) and Coinpro.Exchange (decentralized exchange for trading synthetic assets) are the core products of the system. Considering that the core product needs to have a strict resource control mechanism and a protection mechanism for transaction rollback, it was decided to use Substrate smart contracts for development.

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