Why is the Polkadot middleware so important in the era of Web3.0?
Polkadot + Middleware = ?This article is published by the Polkadot Ecology Research Institute.
Background
Let's shift our perspective back to two years ago, a year that saw the birth of numerous blockchain projects that raised funds through ICOs, then developed a unique chain by their teams, subsequently launching corresponding blockchain applications based on this chain, and attempting to further implement the ideal state of "one chain, one DApp."
However, at that time, apart from forking an existing chain (like forking Ethereum), it was very difficult to create a chain with better performance than Ethereum. This required highly skilled professionals and a significant investment of time and effort in research and development. Many teams spent several months or even a year or two at this stage, naturally leaving no time for subsequent application development and implementation.
The Substrate framework behind Polkadot is precisely the solution to this problem. With the Substrate framework, launching a chain can be done with a single click, greatly reducing the time and cost for teams to develop a chain. As a result, development teams can focus more on how to create effective blockchain applications.
This is not only crucial for the Polkadot ecosystem but also holds significant meaning for the entire blockchain industry. It lowers the technical barriers in the blockchain industry, accelerating the development of the entire sector, which will inevitably promote the birth of more blockchain projects.
It sounds like with the Substrate framework, developing blockchain applications is a worry-free endeavor, but is that really the case?
If a blockchain project's goal is to achieve one chain, one DApp, then the Substrate framework addresses the challenge of creating a chain. In reality, developing DApps also presents unique challenges. How to clear the obstacles in DApp development and make the creation of DApps more convenient and efficient brings us to an important aspect of the Polkadot ecosystem that we are observing today—middleware.
"Middleware" may hide new giants
What is Middleware?
Broadly speaking, middleware refers to applications that do not directly provide value to users but exist between business applications and system software. (Here, we lean towards a broad understanding of middleware; we focus more on the entire ecosystem of broad middleware rather than being limited to a specific narrow definition.)
Its overall function is to provide a runtime and development environment for the applications above it, helping users flexibly and efficiently develop and integrate complex applications.
For example, the apps we use daily, such as Toutiao, Alipay, and WeChat, are business applications directly facing users, and we are more familiar with these everyday applications. However, there are also applications that we are almost unaware of, which are specifically aimed at developers or provide various functions and services for official operating systems. These applications are middleware, such as Kingdee middleware or some application servers provided by IBM. Additionally, as many companies migrate their businesses to the cloud, many cloud vendors are also offering cloud + middleware services, such as Alibaba Cloud or Amazon Web Services (AWS).
For most people, Amazon Web Services (AWS) may seem more unfamiliar compared to other applications we know, as it is more oriented towards developers or enterprises. However, merely helping a single developer or enterprise does not hold much value; it is the aggregation of many that counts. When numerous applications are based on AWS, it naturally becomes a giant (similar to the merchant platform provided by Taobao).
Today, AWS's net sales for the entire year of 2020 reached $45.37 billion, quietly becoming a behemoth worth over a trillion RMB. Clearly, this number will continue to grow as the digitalization process advances. It can be said that this is a low-profile giant field hidden behind many well-known software, which is why we are optimistic about this ecosystem.
So, how do we understand middleware in the blockchain field, and which projects are worth paying attention to?
Traditional middleware is a large category of foundational software and a concept in traditional distributed systems. It does not have a strict definition, and there is no consensus on what specifically constitutes blockchain middleware. Here, we define applications that provide functions and services specifically for blockchain networks or DApps as blockchain middleware (this is the definition of the Polkadot Ecology Research Institute, for reference only).
Currently, many well-known projects actually belong to the middleware of the blockchain world, such as Chainlink (with the token LINK), which helps on-chain applications interact with off-chain data in various ways; The Graph (with the token GRT), which specializes in providing on-chain data indexing services and aims to create the Google of the blockchain world; and Infura, a semi-decentralized largest node service provider for Ethereum that allows DApps to quickly connect to Ethereum. We can glimpse the significance of middleware for blockchain through the functions of these projects.
Why does blockchain need middleware?
Although the Substrate framework solves the problem of launching chains, developing DApps also has its own challenges. Many blockchain projects or DApps do not simply require code development; they also need a stable and efficient operating environment and some additional data support. Without these foundations, many projects struggle to operate. Middleware serves the blockchain in a manner similar to its role in the internet—helping blockchain developers flexibly and efficiently develop and integrate various functions to ensure that projects run safely and stably.
Currently, most DeFi applications are data-driven. DeFi developers may be skilled at developing DApps, but DeFi needs to incorporate external data, which requires oracles. However, creating an oracle is inherently challenging; we cannot expect DeFi developers to be jack-of-all-trades, overcoming every problem.
The current situation is that professionals do professional work. Teams skilled in creating oracles have developed projects like Chainlink, allowing DeFi developers to simply connect to Chainlink for the data support it provides. Currently, Chainlink has provided price feed services for many DeFi projects, which is why LINK has reached new highs.
On the other hand, DApps need solutions for obtaining and transforming data from underlying data sources, as blockchain data is stored in formats that are difficult to directly access and use in applications. As previously mentioned, The Graph processes over 4 billion data query requests each month from well-known DeFi projects and data analysis companies like Uniswap, CoinGecko, and Synthetix regarding prices, historical trading volumes, liquidity, etc. Similarly, The Graph profitably addresses the demand for on-chain data indexing from various projects.
If conditions permit, most developers would choose a safer and faster self-built node approach. However, the cost of operating and maintaining Ethereum full nodes is high, and many nodes are unwilling to make their node services public, which is quite frustrating for DApp developers. Infura has recognized this demand by providing general Ethereum node services and offering free entry-level services, attracting numerous developers. Infura quickly became the world's largest Ethereum node service provider and has made significant contributions to the prosperity of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Thus, middleware is a necessary and important infrastructure that exists between blockchain and DApps. Some middleware projects are already shining, so what is the situation of middleware in the Polkadot ecosystem?
Middleware in the Polkadot Ecosystem
Recently, the official list of the 8th Grant has been announced, and one of the projects called Apron is targeting the middleware ecosystem. Let's take a look at the significance of middleware for the Polkadot ecosystem through the lens of Apron.
Why does Apron target middleware in Polkadot?
Apron is a decentralized platform that provides infrastructure services for DApp developers, DApp users, and operators. It aims to become a decentralized Amazon Web Services (AWS), offering decentralized node services, oracles, on-chain data indexing, random number generation, and various middleware infrastructure.
The Apron team originally consisted of DApp developers on Ethereum, but last year, Infura experienced a significant incident. At that time, many blockchain application developers relied on Infura's services, which became increasingly centralized. This incident had a major impact, causing cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and Bithumb to suspend ETH and ERC-20 token withdrawals, and the well-known wallet Metamask also encountered some issues. Therefore, although Infura has made significant contributions to developers and Ethereum, its centralized nature has become a potential risk.
This painful lesson motivated the Apron team to change the current situation of severe reliance on centralized services in the Web3.0 world. On the other hand, various middleware projects in the blockchain space focus on their specific niches, but there is currently a lack of a universal technical solution to connect these niches. Thus, Apron decided to create a decentralized infrastructure service network based on Polkadot to change this situation.
What can middleware bring to Polkadot, using Apron as an example?
(1) DApp version of the "Substrate framework": Accelerating the development of DApps in the Polkadot ecosystem
Earlier, we mentioned that Substrate provides the important function of "one-click chain launch." Similarly, the Polkadot ecosystem also needs middleware products that are convenient for developers to use. Therefore, the emergence of Apron fills this gap. In the short term, Apron greatly facilitates developers in building DApp products within the Polkadot ecosystem. In the long term, Apron's existence provides a new platform for the rapid expansion of DApps in the Polkadot ecosystem, especially considering that Ethereum already has thousands of DApps.
Specifically, Apron has built a "Service Marketplace" that matches the services provided by infrastructure service providers with the needs of DApp developers. Infrastructure service providers can deploy Apron Nodes with one click to realize on-chain infrastructure services. On the other hand, this marketplace can quickly connect demand and supply, akin to building a distributed infrastructure version of "Filecoin," allowing DApp developers to choose their infrastructure service providers.
At the same time, the Apron SDK allows application developers to quickly access data from the application network after integrating this functionality, ensuring that the information exchanged is encrypted, thereby lowering the barriers for DApp developers to build their own data communication.
Of course, these applications or functions are just one part of Apron's efforts to rapidly expand the DApp ecosystem. The ultimate effect is to allow DApp development within the Polkadot ecosystem to be modular and flexible, without worrying about API interface issues, data usage problems, or information exchange issues. When the infrastructure provided by Apron can solve various DApp development problems and enhance usability, DApp projects within the ecosystem will inevitably flourish.
Therefore, we believe that Apron has built a DApp version of "Substrate" for application developers, which will provide a solid foundation for the explosion of DApps in the Polkadot ecosystem.
(2) More diverse infrastructure makes projects more decentralized
Ethereum, which seems decentralized, has become less so due to too many projects relying on a centralized node service provider, Infura, which poses a risk of becoming a single point of failure affecting Ethereum. Last year, there was indeed an incident where Infura encountered errors, impacting many well-known exchanges and wallets in the industry.
On the other hand, most of Infura's servers are hosted on another centralized giant—Amazon Web Services (AWS). This means that if something goes wrong with Amazon's servers one day, it will also affect the operation of Ethereum nodes.
There are many other incidents of centralization risks in the blockchain field, such as oracles. Since they provide price feed services in DeFi, and these prices directly affect funds, any issues with oracles can lead to significant asset losses. There are mainly two types of oracle incidents: one is when the data source is incorrect, leading to erroneous prices being fed into on-chain DeFi applications, which are then quickly arbitraged by trading bots; the other is when hackers manipulate prices for profit.
These incidents clearly indicate that decentralization of infrastructure in the blockchain is essential. Apron provides rich infrastructure options, allowing DApp developers to have more choices in their infrastructure, which not only makes the projects using these infrastructures more decentralized, avoiding the pitfalls of Infura, but also allows for multi-party verification to prevent influence from a single information source.
As an important concept of Web3.0, Polkadot naturally needs such a role. Only when infrastructure is decentralized can true Web3.0 be realized.
(3) Becoming another infrastructure "hub" for interconnecting thousands of chains in Polkadot
While we believe that Polkadot will bring about true interconnectivity of thousands of chains, this journey is still fraught with challenges, and many elements are still needed. This is why many new projects receive official Grants from the Web3 Foundation every quarter; it is precisely due to the imperfections and deficiencies in infrastructure that more quality projects and teams are needed to enter the Polkadot ecosystem.
Platforms like Apron, which originally provide infrastructure services for the ecosystem, will inevitably receive significant attention and support. If Apron can fulfill the functions we mentioned above, its position in the Polkadot ecosystem will undoubtedly become a "hub" for another type of infrastructure.
This means it will be a middleware platform that integrates DApp ecosystem development, data indexing, node services, and pricing services, and it will be a decentralized platform. Developers connecting to the Polkadot ecosystem will also benefit from the functionalities and conveniences brought by Apron, which highlights the special significance of middleware platforms.
Polkadot's architecture can facilitate cross-chain interactions, but on the other hand, middleware, due to its unique ecological position, can also provide infrastructure services for each chain, achieving interconnectivity of thousands of chains from a different perspective. From this point, we can also see that the future ecosystem of Polkadot will not simply be a structure of parallel chains (or bridges) and relay chains, but will have more possibilities and diverse connection methods.
Of course, we also know that becoming a "hub" requires favorable timing, geographical advantages, and human resources, and Apron still needs to make more efforts on this path. However, from the perspective of ecological positioning, the Polkadot ecosystem indeed needs such a position, and Apron happens to stand there.
Future Imagination of Middleware: Accelerating the Arrival of Web3.0
In previous articles, we explored the future of Web3.0, focusing on the application platforms of Web3.0. Following the development of middleware in Polkadot, we seem to see the embryonic form of Web3.0.
The imaginative space of middleware can already be glimpsed through Amazon Web Services, but as a decentralized infrastructure middleware platform, it seems to have even greater potential.
Currently, the Apron network is primarily building a series of functions and ecological alliances around the Polkadot ecosystem. However, if a decentralized middleware platform only serves the Polkadot ecosystem, it may not be sufficiently "decentralized." Therefore, the Apron network is looking towards a larger future.
According to Apron's official statement, in the future, Apron can also connect to Ethereum, BSC, Filecoin, Helium, and various Layer 2 projects, thereby building more types of service providers to meet the needs of the entire blockchain network. Developers using Apron can innovate across chains with multiple blockchain ecosystems at a lower cost, which is the interesting chemical reaction brought by Apron API Marketing.
Of course, if it can meet the needs of the vast majority of blockchain applications and networks on the market, then Apron's next step may complete its definition of a "decentralized infrastructure service network" and transition from blockchain to the vision of Web3.0. This is what all teams currently imagining future applications hope for, and Apron is no exception.
Therefore, in the future, Apron hopes to leverage the decentralized power of blockchain networks to gradually transition currently centralized infrastructure platforms to decentralization, allowing various developers to avoid investing significant costs and efforts in maintaining basic infrastructure and to complete most functions within the Apron network.
This will also create a good communication environment and exchange platform for developers and consumers, further enhancing information security. Both parties can benefit from reduced costs, enabling anyone to quickly build their applications, which is the essence of Web3.0.
Postscript
Although there is still great potential for middleware in the Polkadot ecosystem from Apron's perspective, it is important to note that some projects are still in relatively early stages and need continuous implementation to validate themselves.
However, based on Apron's planned direction, we can continue to observe its progress from several aspects. First, whether it can successfully connect to mainstream public chain node services; second, how many users utilize the various middleware services it provides, and we can monitor the data progress in this regard; third, how many DApps Apron will support in the future.
As blockchain projects gradually transition to the implementation phase, we can intuitively feel the development of projects through some on-chain data, such as certain DeFi projects or the data presented by The Graph. We also look forward to Apron truly taking off in the future, as its usability can be a good catalyst for the ecosystem, and we welcome projects that benefit the entire ecosystem.
Of course, the middleware ecosystem is vast, and Apron is just one of the more typical projects at present. This ecological niche is worth our attention because the absence of an ecological niche will inevitably lead to the emergence of substitutes. Just as many people were pessimistic about Pinduoduo, we believe that even without Pinduoduo, there will be another giant to occupy the sinking market niche in the e-commerce industry. This is the logic of ecological niches and the direction that Apron is targeting.
References:
The Graph decentralized Google AWS, processing over 4 billion requests per month for Uniswap and others.
What exactly is Infura, which caused "problems" for wallets and cryptocurrency trading platforms?
