SKALE KNOWLEDGE — Ethereum Interoperable Elastic Blockchain Network || Elastic Sidechains || SKALE Manager || NODE Creation & Destruction
Hello Readers!!!
Bringing this back here to remind you about the uniqueness of the SKALE Network. Read through some important things to know about the SKALE Network Ecosystem.
We can’t discuss SKALE without talking about the Ethereum Blockchain. SKALE is an Ethereum Interoperable Elastic Blockchain Network and is also currently the fastest blockchain network according to the Dartmouth Blockchain study.
ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN
Ethereum network is one of the largest blockchain networks with the highest number of DApps in the crypto space, This network has accommodated lots of dapps even with the problem it faces and the high amount of gas fees users have to pay to get through with a transaction It is called the ERC20 network.
Ethereum network has faced many problems since its inception even though it was widely and ecstatically accepted by Blockchain lovers around the world, being the first network of dApps and the largest network after the Bitcoin network. While the Ethereum network keeps growing in numbers of dApps built and users onboarded, Research was also being carried out by blockchain professionals and by communities which identified problems faced by the network and what ways these problems can be solved.
Over the years, many other Blockchain Networks were birth for one purpose or another, Many of these networks were built to simplify some of the difficulties on the Ethereum blockchain, especially for users and DApp developers, they interact with ETHEREUM to solve a major problem which makes many of them exist as a Sidechain Network.
SIDECHAIN NETWORK
A Sidechain Network, just as its name implies is a secondary blockchain network connected to the main blockchain with two-way pegs, Some sidechains might have their consensus protocol completely different from the Mainchain’s but they are mainly built to simplify or solve a problem that may include, improving privacy and security of the traditional blockchain. Sidechains enable developers to deploy blockchain solutions that can quickly scale the mainchain at a lower cost with a higher level of security, Sidechains hold significant for the enrichment of the capabilities of the existing Blockchain Network.
SKALE as a SIDECHAIN NETWORK
SKALE Network’s primary and initial use cases are in the form of an Ethereum elastic sidechain, SKALE can now and will be referred to(in this context) as an Elastic Sidechain Network of Ethereum operated through a group of virtualized subnodes which are selected from nodes within the network and are run on all or subset of each node’s computation and storage resource. Therefore, the SKALE Network is meant to be a high-throughput, low latency, and configurable byzantine fault-tolerant, elastic blockchain network built interoperably with the Ethereum Network.
Before anyone(developers and users) can work in the SKALE, the SKALE daemon must be run and users will have to stake an already predetermined amount of the SKALE Network token on the Ethereum mainnet. This will happen through different series of smart contracts in the SKALE network which is called SKALE MANAGER.
Any node admitted to the Skale network will trigger the selection of random 24 peer nodes which will audit its latency and uptime and will be submitted to the SKALE MANAGER to influence the node’s reward for participating in the network.
For a user to create an elastic sidechain, they have to be specific with their desired chain configuration and are required to submit payment correlating to the time or duration they wish to rent the network resource in running the chain. Before the virtualized subnodes can be randomly assigned, their network has to have enough bandwidth, and nodes meeting computation and storage requirements specified in the chain’s configuration.
For already existing Ethereum-based smart contracts, only EVM(Ethereum Virtual Machine) within Elastic Sidechains will allow consumers to deploy contracts(Existing) directly to them while an increased gas limit lifts the computation and storage limitations of the Ethereum mainnet EVM. This is an advantage for smart contracts that were unable to run in a performant and cost-effective manner.
In each Elastic Sidechain consensus model, they also support BLS signatures which allow interchain messaging. This interaction and BLS signature let a virtualized subnode on one chain validate that a transaction was signed and committed by another virtualized subnode on another chain, This is done through the help of the chain’s group signature and it is made available to all other chains on the Mainchain(Ethereum Mainnet).
What is SKALE Manager?
SKALE manager, it is a manager obviously but what does this manager do for SKALE NETWORK, Skale Manager is on the Ethereum mainnet and it is the security at the entrance for all smart contracts for the SKALE ecosystem, SKALE manager manages the orchestration of all entities existing in the network. The SKALE Manager manages;
- Node Creation
- Node Destruction
- Elastic Sidechain Creation
- Elastic Sidechain Destruction
- Withdrawals
- Bounty Issuance
The SKALE Manager also leverages the randomness of the Ethereum Mainnet to select a group of available nodes with enough space on them to go with the desired subnode size and match them to an Elastic Sidechain.
Node Creation
Creating a Node on the SKALE Network requires some steps. The prospective node has to run the SKALE daemon which helps evaluate it and make sure it is upholding all the network hardware requirements. This is a verification stage that has to be passed by the prospective node and if passed, the daemon will then permit it to submit a request to join the SKALE Manager.
The daemon must have collected network deposit and node metadata and this will be contained in the request, Examples of things collected are the port, the public key, and the IP address. The request will be committed to the Ethereum Network and the prospective node will be added in either of the two wats, as a Full Node or Fractional Node.
A full Node will have all of the required resources utilized for a single Elastic Sidechain while a Fractional Node will operate in Multitenancy i.e. in Multiple Sidechains.
The Node is created, it will have a larger group of other nodes as a peer in the network assigned to it, The peers are useful for regular audit node downtime and latency at an already specified and set time(could be 5 minutes, 10 minutes or more), then this metrics will be submitted to the SKALE Manager just once for every network epoch, this information submitted will be used as a determination for node’s bounty reward.
NODE Destruction
An existing Node might want to exit from the network, To do this, the node exiting the network must declare its intent to exit and wait for the required completion for finalization, The finalization period may take 2 days or more and afterwards, it becomes inactive in the network and the initial stakes will be withdrawn.
When exiting, if the node cannot wait for the finalization period and node happens to exit immediately from the Network, this node will be classified and noted as a non-conforming(dead) node by SLA virtualization subnodes, the bounty meant for the node will not be paid and then the network will schedule an exiting cycle for the node out of the chain.
You can read more about SKALE on their website here
