How Nervos' Universal Passport Solves the Interoperability Conundrum | by Nervos

In last week's Nervos event, we learned how interoperability can shape the future of blockchain evolution.

So I think as we grow as an industry and as we serve more and more people, we're going to start to stretch the limit of the boundaries of existing platforms.

Nervos is an open source, public blockchain ecosystem dedicated to solving one of the biggest challenges currently facing blockchain technology today. The co founder at Nervos, Kevin Wang, is here to present their groundbreaking interoperability technology, the Universal Passport.

Thank you, Giovanni. I'm happy to explain a little bit more about Universal Passport, which is Nervos Network's interoperability solution. Let's first look into the concept of interoperability. We believe that the future of the decentralized economy is going to be built on multiple blockchains, including both highly specialized blockchains such as Bitcoin to store value and rate of currency and other specialized blockchains for specific applications, as well as general platforms like Ethereum and Nervos. And this will even include open, permissioned or even private blockchains. All blockchains will come together and form an Internet like public network. Therefore we need every blockchain to be able to interop with one another. For example, we want to move assets from one blockchain to another one. We want to be able to swap assets between blockchains or have applications that will call smart contracts on multiple blockchains. So interoperability as a research topic, it has been around for a few years, but it mostly has focused on cross chain, which is more about just moving assets across different blockchains. It takes a very chain focused point of view. And then talk about the specific protocols, how you would ensure security between typically assets moving between different blockchains. When we look at some of the most well known interoperability solutions, Polkadot and Cosmos, for example, are both cross chain projects that could connect all blockchains that are compatible with their own standards. But who will win in the end? We don't know. And they both have grand visions. And then they both promise that as long as new blockchains are built with their own frameworks or toolkit, then they can be connected to their own universe of blockchains. However, what we are seeing is that blockchains are connecting together directly. For example, we're seeing Bitcoin is bridged to Ethereum directly without going through, for example, either Cosmos or Polkadot. And the same idea that Zcash and Ethereum will be connecting together. So I think we will Start to see more and more these ad hoc connections between pure blockchains, instead of a new protocol that will eventually be adopted by all the blockchains as the hub or the relay for our blockchain to connect. Other than the standards problem, right, today we do have many standards that are incompatible. Another problem that we're seeing today is this user experience problem. And just imagine a user, when they use an application that access multiple blockchains, they need to have wallets that can talk to these multiple blockchains. For example, if you're an Ethereum user and then you want to, you want to, you have a metamask wallet set up, but if the application also need to use Bitcoin, and then you also need to install the Bitcoin wallet, which means you have to create an account, you have to remember, write down the seed phrases, and then you obviously have to download the wallet and know the interface, how to operate it, and so on. And just imagine now you have more than just two blockchains connecting together. For the end user, the hurdle to be able to work through the two interfaces will be very, very difficult. Creating new standards, trying to unite existing standards never work out too well in the past. Instead, we need to think about how to be compatible and support existing standards. This is the promise of interoperability 2.0. And this is the result of us at Nervos trying to think about solutions from the first principled approach. We try to think about once the perfect solution will be built, what we want to accomplish in the ideal situation. And this is what we come up with. So we want to be able to have users operate on any assets from anywhere. And this actually solves both of the problem that we highlighted. The first one is this incompatible standards problem, right? So we don't want to create new standards, so there shouldn't be new standards, but instead we should be compatible with all the existing standards. And similarly, we shouldn't ask user to have multiple interfaces and multiple identities. Instead we want the user to use any interface and then have a unified identity. In other words, we want to meet user where they are instead of asking them to get used to the interfaces that fit into the underlying plumbing or infrastructure. So now let's look at Universal Passport. And this is specifically how we at Nervos implement this, what we call interoperability. To implement the interoperability 2.0 for the universal Passport solution to work, there are several layers of technologies that we put together. At the bottom is our public blockchain, which is nervous KKB and Then CKB stands for Common Knowledge Base. And the two features that enable this universal passport on the public blockchain level are flexible crypto primitives and also abstract cell model. And we'll talk a little bit about, you know, what they exactly mean and how they enable this. But on top of the the public blockchain infrastructure, we have a layer, what we call interoperability 2.0 components, right? So these are PW Core, Force Bridge and Polyjuice. And again we'll get into these one at a time later. And then on top of it, developers can build applications that are naturally multi chain, right? Or naturally cross chain applications, or multi chain applications. So let's look at these components one at a time. Force Bridge. So Force Bridge is a general crossing protocol between Nervos and any other blockchains. The reason that this can be generic and then can connect to every blockchain, it's because when you think about the ability to verify transactions across blockchains, you have to be able to essentially write in smart contract the other blockchains cryptographic proofs. You have to be able to interpret it and then be able to verify those. And to do that, the blockchain itself needs to support whatever the crypto primitives that the other chains are built with, so they can interpret transactions. So Nervos comes with flexible crypto primitives, which means developers don't have to wait for the core, you know, the builders of the infrastructure, the core devs or hard forks to include pre compiles for these primitives. But at any time they can sort of roll up their sleeves and then include these libraries as they wish, as they will. So with that, Nervos can much more easily interpret the proofs from any other blockchains and then be able to have cross chain protocols in a very decentralized manner. And the next component is pwcore. And this is built by a community team called Leytu. And this solution allows you to build applications that's accessible to all users on other different blockchains. You know, for example, an application built on Nervos through PW Core, you can reach users on Tron or EOS or Ethereum. All they have to do is using their existing, existing wallets and they'll be able to interact with the application. Finally there is polyjuice, which is right now it's a Ethereum compatibility layer. But it, you know, it is really a general computation platform. So right now, you know, we're making it EVM compatible. And so what this solves is developers can move their existing written smart contracts on Ethereum and then seamlessly through this compatibility layer and run them on Nervos. So you know, it preserved the investment they have already made with their application. And also just, you know, if they have already done so on Ethereum, this is much faster to market. So let's look at the user stories, right? So from Ethereum users point of view, they are currently, today they're using ETH wallets such as Metamask and Token to interact with Ethereum. And then when we talk about Ethereum ecosystem, it could be the ETH blockchain itself, it could be layer two applications. And now they can also through the same interfaces, they can also work with Nervos with applications on Nervos. When they need to work with other blockchains. However, it can be so, so easy because you see the connection between their interface and other blockchain, there's no direct connection between the two. So they have to be operating on the ETH blockchain and then use another different access point to operate these other blockchains. So that's, you know, they have to go through this route and then to look at other blockchain, go through other blockchain wallets to operate other blockchains and which is a big hurdle for them. Similarly, if you look at from Bitcoin users point of view, so today they're operating Bitcoin with their Bitcoin wallets, such as Bitcoin Electrum. And then so for them they're operating the Bitcoin blockchain and then if they want to also be using Ethereum then they have this another access point, you know, Metamask or Mtoken to operate Ethereum. Now for any other blockchains, again they have to install other blockchain wallets. Now what's special about Nervos is from Bitcoin users point of view, they can be operating Nervos as part of their Bitcoin ecosystem, right? So they can transfer BTCs from their Bitcoin wallets, but they can also operating applications on Nervos directly with their Bitcoin wallets, right? So they're universe of Bitcoin of Bitcoin includes both BTC blockchain as well as Nervos. So that's for the Bitcoin user's point of view. So now what's even more interesting is it's the user journey for the Internet users, right? And this is there are much more obviously Internet users than Bitcoin or Ethereum users today. So for them using Nervos as the backend for digital economy is really the same as the way they're operating their Internet today. Either through their mobile devices or through their browser, they can access Internet and then through the same infrastructure, through the same interfaces, they can also operate in applications on Nervos, right? So for them, Nervos just complements their existing Internet and brings this decentralized world to Internet. Whereas if they need to operate any other blockchain, they have to go and install a blockchain wallet and then again remember, see phrases and acquire some tokens and know how to send transactions to understand the concepts behind it. So let's, let's do a quick review, right? So for Bitcoin users, they come from Bitcoin wallets, and then for Ethereum users, they come from the Ethereum wallets, right? And then these are the blockchain users that they already have their current preferred interface to access the blockchain world. And then Nervos Network, Nervos will fit anywhere, regardless how they choose to access, either from the point of view of Bitcoin or point of view of Ethereum or any other blockchains. So Nervos will be there and Nervos also connects with all these networks. But that's not really the whole story, right? So there is this much larger base of Internet users and for them, what we believe the natural onboarding to the blockchain world is through Nervos, because Nervos is able to plug directly into their current tools and then their current and even future tools, right? So whether it's laptop computers with secret enclaves or mobile devices with cryptographic solutions like these secure chips that they can preserve, it's almost like a hardware wallet within a mobile device. So they can directly use their current devices to access the decentralized world through Nervos. So this is what we called, what we call the universal passport. And then it doesn't matter where you come from, and we are able to meet where you are and bring you all these assets from different networks and present them in front of users. So it's for a solution for a fully decentralized world, but provide a almost centralized, like, user experience. So at the last point, even Nervos Network is in the middle. But because of Nervos Networks, crypto economics, right? So the more users that we serve and the more applications that we have, and that will drive the demand for Nervos cryptocurrency, which will make Nervous Network more secure and then make it more attractive as this, this gateway or passport to the digital economy for, for all different types of users. So that's, that's the presentation. And then for Nervos Network, please come to our website. You know, if you're a developer, you're very welcome to look at our GitHub and you know, we have included links for all these solutions and then we will also have developer focused events in 2021 Cointelegraph like Subscribe and HODL.