Peeking Under the Hood: Key Pillars of Crypto Infrastructure

Blockchain infrastructure can be an overloaded and confusing term — it’s often synonymous with a wide range of products and services that cover everything from smart contract auditing to cross-chain bridging. This article will provide a broad overview of the key components of the blockchain infrastructure to help you understand and lay out the infrastructure sector.

We define the ‘ecosystem’ of blockchain infrastructure as protocols intended to support the development of L1s and L2s in the following key areas:

• Layer-0 Infrastructure: (1) Decentralized Cloud Services (Storage, Compute, Indexing); (2) Node Infrastructure (RPC, Staking / Validators)
• Middleware: (1) Data Availability; (2) Communication / Messaging Protocols
• Blockchain Development: (1) Security and Testing; (2) Developer Tooling (Out-of-the-Box Tools, Front/Backend Libraries, Languages / IDEs)

1️⃣Layer 0 Infrastructure

1.1 Decentralized Cloud

As compute and data needs for applications have grown, service providers specialized in making this data and compute quickly available in a cost-effective manner have been critical. There are three core components of the decentralized cloud:

• Storage — data/files are stored on servers run by many entities. Because data is replicated or striped across multiple machines, these networks can achieve a high degree of fault tolerance.
• Compute — just like with storage, compute is centralized in the Web2 paradigm. Decentralized computing is concerned with distributing this computation across many nodes to achieve a higher degree of fault tolerance (if one or a set of nodes goes down, the network can still service requests with minimal disruption to performance).
• Indexing — Because blockchain nodes are distributed, data can be siloed and fragmented across different regions and often under incompatible standards. Indexing protocols aggregate this data and provide an easy-to-use and standardized API to access such data.

There are a couple of projects that provide storage, computing, and indexing (Aleph and Akash network) while others are more specialized (i.e. The Graph for indexing, Arweave / Filecoin for storage).

SFT Protocol is an underlying service protocol serving basic public chains (such as Filecoin), which can provide permissionless, decentralized cross-chain communication and modular LSD, storage, privacy computing, and other services.

1.2 Node Infrastructure

• Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) are core to the function of many kinds of software systems. They allow one program to call or access a program on another computer. This is particularly useful for blockchains, which have to serve a plethora of incoming requests from various machines running in various regions and environments. SFT Protocol and others provide this infrastructure as a service, enabling builders to focus on high-level application development instead of focusing on the construction of the underlying mechanism.
• Staking / Validators — the security of blockchains relies on a set of distributed nodes validating transactions on-chain, but someone must run the nodes that participate in consensus. In many cases, the time, cost, and energy required to run nodes are prohibitively expensive. Services such as P2P and Blockdaemon run the infrastructure and allow less sophisticated and well-capitalized users to participate in consensus by pooling funds.

SFT Protocol provides users with RPC nodes, AI, hardware GPU rendering, and other services in terms of node infrastructure, and there are more possibilities in the future.

2️⃣Middleware

2.1 Data Availability

Data oracles like Pyth and Chainlink provide access to data streams not available on-chain, allowing crypto networks to interact with traditional/legacy systems and other external information in a reliable and decentralized manner.

Data Availability Layers are chains that specialize in ordering transactions and making data available to the chains they support. Proof of data availability is key to guaranteeing the reliability of Rollup sequencers and reducing the cost of Rollup transaction processing. Celestia is a great example of this layer.

2.2 Communication and Messaging

As the number of Layer-1 and its ecosystems grows, the need to manage cross-chain composability and interoperability becomes more acute. Cross-chain bridges allow for otherwise siloed ecosystems to interact in a meaningful way. Wormhole, Layer Zero, and other bridging solutions support generalized message passing, allowing all types of data and information, including tokens to move across multiple ecosystems.

That is also one of the future development directions of the SFT Protocol.

3️⃣Blockchain Development

3.1 Security and Testing

Crypto applications are particularly sensitive to security risks because they often directly secure assets. Tiny errors in design or implementation can often lead to huge economic outcomes.

There are seven main approaches to security and testing:

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• Auditing
• Formal verification
• Simulation
• Bug Bounties
• Test Networks (testnet)

SFT Protocol implements different testing methods in stages. For example, the unit test is written at contract build time, and the bug bounty program is launched after deployment to the main network, using community resources to find and fix problems. Both the test network and the main network of SFT Protocol have been launched. If you have any feedback, please come to our community.

3.2 Developer Tooling

We segment developer tooling into three main categories:

• Out-of-the-Box Tools — (1) SDKs for developing new L1s help to abstract away the process of creating and deploying the underlying consensus core. Pre-built modules allow flexibility and customization but are optimized for development speed and standardization. (2) Smart Contract Development — There are a number of tools that can help developers spin up smart contracts quickly. For example, Truffle boxes contain simple examples of Solidity contracts (Voting, Metacoin…).
• Frontend/ Backend Tooling — some tools make it easier to develop applications.
• Languages and IDEs — for EVM-compatible chains Solidity and Vyper are used heavily. Other languages like Rust are used heavily for chains like Solana and Terra.

We hope this piece struck the right balance for those just entering crypto and those seeking a more in-depth overview, and we hope everyone pays more attention to the infrastructure track and SFT Protocol.

🏡Official Links

SFT Protocol Twitter Discord Telegram Gitbook YouTube Linktree