Blockchain expansion plan and main second-layer network plan

In recent years, technical developers and project teams have continued to propose various solutions. These solutions can be mainly divided into two categories: on-chain expansion and off-chain expansion.

On-chain expansion means "operating" directly on the blockchain - modifying the rules, including block size, consensus mechanism, etc. For example, the block size of the Bitcoin blockchain is directly expanded from 1M to 32M, 128M or even 2G (this is the difference in block size between BTC, BCH and BSV). Another example is the "Ethernet" that is now given high hopes. The technical solution that "Fang 2.0" will adopt - Sharding technology.

Off-chain expansion refers to the establishment of a second-layer transaction network outside the main chain, so off-chain expansion is also called "Layer 2".

If the on-chain expansion is compared to the widening of a road, then the off-chain expansion is to build new viaducts, tunnels, paths, etc. next to it. If you want to know more about the difference between on-chain and off-chain scaling, please read "What is on-chain and off-chain scaling".

##The current off-chain expansion solutions can be mainly divided into three categories: The first category is for Extended payments, such as the Lightning Network on Bitcoin; one is used to extend smart contracts; and the other is used for off-chain computing.

So, what are the off-chain expansion solutions that are relatively well-known to the public?

There is no doubt that the most widely known off-chain expansion solution is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. On January 14, 2016, the "white paper" (paper) of the Lightning Network was published, and subsequently a large number of developers developed and tested it. In January 2017, lnd, the first Lightning Network implementation, released its Alpha version. In the summer of 2017, the groundwork for the Bitcoin Lightning Network was completed. As of now, the Lightning Network has a total of 17,879 nodes, 86,494 channels, and 5015.13 BTC locked.

##2022.10.14 Current status of Bitcoin Lightning Network, source: 1ML

Of course, The current Lightning Network is also developing relatively quickly.

In March 2018, Lightning Network nodes suffered a DDOS attack, causing approximately 200 nodes to go offline. If you want to know more about Lightning Network, please read "What is Lightning Network".

Similar to the Bitcoin Lightning Network, it is the off-chain expansion solution on Ethereum - Raiden Network.

The Raiden Network supports instant transfers, low cost, scalability and privacy protection, but the underlying protocol is quite complex and not easy to implement.

Liquidity Network is a competitor of Raiden Network.

Its main purpose is to transfer transactions from Ethereum to payment channels. Like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, Liquidity Network users can also conduct transactions back and forth. In this process, there is no need to pay handling fees. Only after opening the channel and There is a fee required to close a channel.

The above are all payment extensions in off-chain expansion, while layered side chain Plasma is an extension of smart contracts.

Plasma is an Ethereum layered side chain co-written by developer Joseph Poon and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. The main goal is to transfer a large number of smart contract calculations to the side chain instead of executing them on the Ethereum main chain. .

Celer Network is also a well-known off-chain expansion solution. The main goal is to build a universal network system that runs on existing and future blockchains, allowing everyone to quickly build, operate and use highly scalable DApps.

It remains to be seen which expansion solutions can mature first and help existing public chains solve scalability problems.

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