Introduction
The blockchain industry is currently hampered for scalability by expensive transactions and execution times, which hampers the user experience. We, like you, face expensive transactions and slow blockchain performance. Today, blockchain technology is in its nascent stage, so even networks that admit to eradicating Ethereum's flaws encounter the same problems as the mainstream network. Remember Arbitrum, where transactions reached several dollars when the network was very busy, which is unacceptable for mass users. Imagine a bank transfer to your friend for which you have to pay 5$ when the total amount is 15$ and it will take an hour to complete. Overall, these shortcomings can be characterized as a scalability problem. Unfortunately, both Optimistic and Zk rollups failed to achieve the desired result. This is why blockchain technology lacks a truly radical solution that can solve these problems.
About the technology
It's worth starting with the backstory - Project Fuel started as an L2 for Ethereum, it was the first optimistic rollup in the Ethereum mainnet, but now Fuel represents the fastest modular level of execution. Fuel's main goal is to maximize access to blockchain technology, but how is Fuel going to achieve minimal transaction cost as well as maximum TPS? - Modularity, that's the main feature of this project. On monolithic blockchains, where the consensus is closely tied to other parts of the blockchain, throughput is severely limited, which is the bottleneck of this kind of solution. Fuel, on the other hand, moves away from this design and is based on modules where all parts are separated from each other. Such a model contributes to increased throughput. The important thing is that Fuel doesn't fix only on L1 problems, what other projects built on rollup do, modularity plays an integral role here, with the help of which, as Ethereum grows, Fuel will not be limited in its computational power.
Fuel has not overlooked security compatible with flexible bandwidth, there are three main factors in the project by which this result is achieved.
Parallel transaction execution.
Fuel achieves high performance by parallel transaction execution using UTXO model, which allows to use more cores and threads.
FuelVM.
Fuel virtual machine is designed to reduce processing, it allows to go beyond traditional EVM development.
Proprietary programming language Sway and supporting tools Forc
Sway is an object-oriented language developed for the Fuel blockchain. It aims to bring modern language development and performance to the blockchain ecosystem. The Sway language retains the advantages of smart contract languages such as Solidity.
The blockchain trilemma and how Fuel is designed to solve it
For a blockchain to work competently, it is required to perform several functions - consensus, data availability, computation and execution. The simultaneous execution of these 4 functions at the same level makes the blockchain monolithic. Monolithic means that the full-node will have to verify the consensus and validity of transactions. This approach limits the monolithic blockchain to the resource capacity of its nodes and makes it nearly impossible to properly balance the above triangle. This is when modular blockchains come to our aid. Instead of processing functions at a single layer, modular blockchains divide the work into different layers. In turn, Fuel is the fastest level of modular execution. MEL (from modular execution layer) can be defined as a verifiable, or fraud-proof, computing system designed for modular blockchains with high data availability.
Comparison of modular and monolithic blockchain
A monolithic blockchain is a blockchain that performs all functions at once. The problem with this solution is that it is impossible to achieve more TPS without sacrificing decentralization or security. It is also worth noting that the network has resource constraints on its nodes - increased scalability leads to increased resource consumption.
Modular blockchain is a new type of blockchain where all parts of execution, consensus, etc., are separated from each other, despite this solution it does not affect sovereignty. Modular blockchains retain the possibility of social consensus, which in turn allows important decisions to be made on the network without the permission of the underlying layer. The main advantage of this technology is scalability without sacrificing decentralization and security, this is due to the separation of execution layers. We should not forget that the separation of resources makes the deployment of smart contracts much cheaper.
A token model that does not hinder the user experience in any way
Network token is used these days to pay for gas, stimulate community, increase network liquidity, etc., but this approach can interfere with the user experience or simply be useless. According to the developers of Fuel, "The optimal token model for any blockchain is to capture the value of the block space," but what does that mean?
Let's break down the trivial example of tokenization of blockchain space - using a token to pay commissions. In this case, a growing demand for block space means a growing demand for token. Block space (in the form of gas) in a rollup is limited, just like in Ethereum. More importantly, the block space in a rollup is different from the block space in Ethereum. Consequently, a shortage of this space can exist independently of Ethereum. Based on this, such a model is useless and also adds problems to users, because now they have to use token to pay commissions.
How to solve this problem?
Rollups can tokenize this lack of space in blocks thanks to the right to charge a commission as a block maker. As with "commission tokens," the growing demand for block space increases fees, which entitles users to increased commission collection, but this does not add to the inconvenience of users because they can use a rollup without using a token to pay commissions. In addition, this way decentralizes the creation of new blocks.
Team
Let's start with co-founder Fuel, as well as co-founder Celestia - John Adler. He attended graduate school at the University of Toronto in electrical engineering and computer science, putting formal methods at the forefront. As a student, he encountered (rather fell in love with) blockchain. Later he did research on L2 scalability at Consensys and even then developed an optimistic rollup design paradigm. At the moment John is working on new features in the standard Sway library and improvements of FuelVM.
Also worth mentioning is Alex Hansen - Technical Team Lead. He is a hockey fan, music lover, watch restorer, as well as a technical team leader. Alex is from Texas and has been programming for over 10 years. With a great passion for compilers he started writing code, then small compilers and eventually enough experience to work on Sway. Alex is currently working on the Sway compiler, namely optimizations, system type consistency and performance improvements.
What without CEO Fuel, you might ask. Nick Dodson is a co-faunder, and also the CEO of Fuel from Toronto. He previously worked at ConsenSys, and it was he who initiated the development of Fuel v1 optimistic Rollup, with the help of Yul+.
Conclusion
To summarize, the big problem with modern blockchains is monolithic. Because of this there are a number of problems, but Fuel is designed to eliminate all the ills once and for all. The project definitely has a great future. Let's wish the team a lot of success and see you again!
