The Best-for-Purpose Blockchain Network

Foundational infrastructure for creating public blockchains that optimize for specific use cases, harness robust shared security guarantees, and interact with one another in a low-friction manner.

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Context

01.1 — Context

In the relatively near future, many of the applications and services that we rely on in our everyday lives will no longer be controlled by big-tech, banks, or other centralized institutions.

Rather, applications and services will run on open, distributed infrastructure that is owned by developers and end-users, and coordinated by socially-optimal incentive mechanisms. While the team behind UDX is not alone in espousing this vision of a decentralized web, we have a differentiated view as to the nature of the infrastructure that needs to be developed — and adopted — in order for this vision to be realized.

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Pathways to the Decentralized Web

02.1 — Pathways to the Decentralized Web

Ethereum and several alternative general-purpose L1 blockchains will help drive the decentralized web towards mass adoption. Their scalability will be driven by a combination of L1, L2, and L3 innovations.

However, while many of the advancements in and around general-purpose L1s are compelling and valuable, they alone will not unlock the full spectrum of design space that developers will require when creating the widely-used applications of tomorrow. Conversely, general-purpose L1s will co-exist, and thrive, alongside a wide range of specialized blockchains that enable developers to make design trade-offs that optimize for specific use cases in ways that general-purpose blockchains cannot.

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The Power of Specialization

03.1 — The Power of Specialization

To understand why specialization will play a key role in the advancement of public blockchain technology, it is helpful to draw parallels with the evolution of processor design.

In recent decades, the sharp slowdown in Moore’s Law scaling prompted the processor design ecosystem to pivot towards domain-specific architectures. The dramatic performance and efficiency gains that resulted from domain-specific improvements led the era of domain-specific architectures to be heralded as “A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture”.

A similar Golden Age beckons for public blockchain technology. By embracing designs and architectures that optimize for specific use cases, blockchain developers will significantly improve performance, security, and efficiency — and deliver dramatically improved user experiences.

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Enabling Best-for-Purpose Blockchains

04.1 — Enabling Best-for-Purpose Blockchains

UDX is the protocol, network, and incentive layer for interoperable, best-for-purpose blockchains. It enables the creation of blockchains that deliver vastly improved experiences by optimizing for specific use cases.

Specialized blockchains within the network are individually sovereign: each is a standalone canonical blockchain that runs its own consensus protocol. But these blockchains are closely aligned with one another from a security and economics standpoint. Specialized blockchains offload their auxiliary functions — including the orchestration of validators, asset minting, and staking — to a single main blockchain that serves as a shared resource that embodies the network's global state.

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Balancing Generality & Specialization

05.1 — Balancing Generality & Specialization

Specialized blockchains are configurable at both the execution layer, and at the consensus and data layer. This granular control enables developers to make the trade-offs that optimize for any target use case.

At the execution layer, developers can opt for a virtualized transaction execution model, where business logic is structured as smart contracts and executed by a virtual machine — whether EVM or WASM-based. Alternatively, developers can opt for a native transaction execution model, where business logic execution is handled directly by the instantiation of the blockchain’s use case specification.

At the consensus and data layer, developers can configure the block creation and finality protocols, fair-ordering mechanisms, and blockchain-specific reward mechanisms according to their desired throughput, time-to-finality, and fair-ordering behavior. In the near future, UDX will be expanding its family of consensus mechanisms to address new frontiers relating to parallelism of execution and leaderless consensus.

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What’s Next

06.1 — What’s Next

UDX currently has ~30 contributors situated throughout Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. The team includes leading researchers from some of the world’s preeminent research institutes.

We are working on research and engineering challenges relating to multi-chain economics, zero-knowledge cryptography, and cross-chain messaging, among other challenges. Further information about the project will be released into the public domain in late Q1 2023, coinciding with our initial testnet release and the publication of our first formal papers. To learn more in the meantime, feel free to reach out: hello@udx.org

UDX is the protocol, network, and incentive layer for interoperable, best-for-purpose blockchains.

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