We have talked many times about the inherent benefits that would arise if developers, specifically app-oriented, switched their focus to start building their projects on top of blockchain, taking advantage of the global reach and almost flawless security that can be achieved with it. However, working on such a different backbone can be difficult and discouraging to some developers, but how can this process be simplified?
The people at SKALE are convinced that traditional blockchain development is not the most friendly environment for new developers and enthusiasts, which is why they are creating a new way of creating decentralized apps on top of a modular cloud on top of the Ethereum blockchain, allowing them to deploy any dApp with only a few lines of code.
Less is More
For a trained software developer, learning how to properly handle a new technology can be a big challenge, and especially when we talk about using blockchain as the backbone for an app. Given how the correct implementation of blockchain requires basic knowledge of cryptography and consensus algorithms, along with the technicalities of specific chains to determine which will be the one that suits their needs the best.
In the case of Ethereum, not only would developers need to learn about their cryptographic mechanism and fault-tolerance algorithm for reaching consensus, but also about sharding techniques, scalability issues and, probably the most versatile tool offered by the second most-valuable blockchain brand out there: smart contracts. These are built with the Solidity programming language and are a way for users to create agreements between them and a second party, defining conditions that must be strictly met for the transaction to take place.
Given all those features and techniques a person must master, SKALE found the opportunity to offer an alternative way to start building on the Ethereum blockchain: elastic blockchains. These Ethereum compatible “proxies” are highly performant, decentralized and configurable, and allow for dApps to be developed using blockchain technology without having to synchronize with the state of the entire network.
The Charm of Simplicity
By using SKALE, developers have simple access to powerful development tools including: a byzantine falut-tolerant consensus algorithm that can protect the network from up to a third of its members being malicious, an asynchronous protocol that takes latency between nodes into consideration while also being leaderless, mitigating the possibilities of collusion, and a system of threshold signatures that allows for quick and seamless interchain communication.
All of this, while eliminating unnecessary complex code functions so developers can speed up the conception, improvement and release of their dApps, and many have already taken advantage of this service to release the likes of games and streaming services. But SKALE also offers the opportunity to apply for their ‘Innovator Program’, allowing developers to run their smart contracts faster and cheaper than in the main network’s sidechains.
Overall, SKALE represents a new way of venturing into the world of blockchain, by taking away some of the more complicated concepts and keeping only the absolutely necessary factors that they need to create powerful, safe and useful dApps that can be ready to be released after a couple of hours. And not only is this attractive to developers and enthusiasts, but it should also work as a model for the current and future blockchain projects on what developers find welcoming and encouraging to transition into the next step of internet communication.