Infrastructure is the underlying factor that drives the development of Web3.
Marlin Protocol enables developers to easily build innovative DApps and promote decentralization! Let's learn more about Marlin Protocol through [Web3 Roundtable]
Introducing Marlin Protocol Marlin is a verifiable computation protocol. At a high level, it allows you to run trustless servers off-chain and verify the results of the computations on-chain. This design is also colloquially known as a coprocessor. It allows you to outsource computations to someone else's machine while still guaranteeing that the results they return to you are correct. Therefore, instead of exposing all data and redundantly performing computations on a large number of machines like a blockchain, a coprocessor allows a single machine to execute programs in a way that ensures computational integrity and data confidentiality. The advantage of this approach is that it enables new types of decentralized applications that were previously impossible due to high costs and slow speeds. - For example, the operation of AI models requires a GPU cluster on the chain, so an AI coprocessor is needed. - In terms of games, currently either very simple on-chain games, also known as autonomous worlds. On the other hand, the game servers of the vast majority of Web3 games are centrally run by the project team themselves. - Similarly, most games in DeFi are also over-collateralized. Pseudo-anonymous accounts do not allow individuals to build their reputation through their activities on the chain, which can be used to expand low-collateralized loans or for more effective airdrop programs. Imagine if you could build a completely trustless AI agent that updates LTV or other risk parameters for DeFi protocols, runs trading bots without the risk of the bot or operator running away with user funds, and the on-chain gaming environment could be dynamically updated while supporting thousands of gamers like a centralized game server. Marlin makes all of this possible. What needs does Marlin Protocol solve? What changes will these solutions bring to blockchain?
As we all know, blockchain has throughput limitations. This has led to many expansion innovations, such as L2, rollups, parallel EVM, SVM, etc. However, these solutions also have their limitations.
- Most of them use block-based data structures. Therefore, you need to aggregate transactions into blocks that propagate at a certain frequency.
-These transactions are executed in a virtual machine designed for smart contracts. Therefore -there is a performance overhead. You can't have super low code execution latency and fast confirmation of correct execution.
-You need to write smart contracts in Solidity or a paradigm that conforms to the blockchain's native virtual machine.
-Cannot reliably use off-chain data. Marlin allows computations to be performed off-chain, just like running in a normal cloud server. As a result, it executes very quickly. You can code in any language (Python, Go, Rust). You can use existing libraries and frameworks (TensorFlow for ML, Unity for games). You can trustlessly access off-chain data and compute on it, whether it is weather data, price information from centralized exchanges, or blockchain history data. You can also use private data for these calculations while ensuring that this data is not leaked and cannot be read by others. Fundamentally, with Marlin, you can "decentralize" existing Web 2 applications without sacrificing performance. So over time, we hope you will see more powerful DeFi applications with an experience comparable to centralized exchanges; on-chain games with latency and interactivity comparable to Web 2 games; and social applications using Marlin for smart recommendations. Introducing Marlin's two major products with breakthroughs and innovations: Oyster and KalypsoWhen computing is outsourced to a decentralized cloud or a third-party node, there are two main problems: They will manipulate the program execution process, resulting in incorrect results They will snoop on your private data and may even leak it to othersTo solve this problem, there are several technologies that can perform verifiable computing. You may have heard of trusted execution environments (TEEs), zero-knowledge encryption or ZKP, multi-party computations (MPCs), and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). FHE is very slow, and there is a problem with MPC that nodes may collude without letting any observer know. Therefore, Marlin focuses on TEEs and ZKPs. TEEs are secure compartments inside the processor. They are like a vault inside the device's main processor, protecting sensitive data and code. The calculations that occur in them are isolated from other processes. Oyster is a network of node operators that provides TEEs. It is very cheap, fast, and practical for many crypto-xai applications, and can be used to run automated or guard robots, clearing robots, and matching engines that run trading platforms or game servers. Existing NodeJS servers can run in Oyster and terminate HTTPS connections in it, which makes it perfect for decentralized frontends. Kalypso, on the other hand, is a ZK proof market. It is circuit-agnostic. It supports private inputs. Therefore, any zk dApp, zkVM, or zkRollup can outsource proof generation to Kalypso. This improves the liveness and censorship resistance of the protocol. It helps improve the user experience of zk applications, as client-side proof generation is time-consuming and can cause user devices to stall. What areas does the solution provided by Marlin Protocol mainly apply to? Do ordinary users have the opportunity to interact with the protocol? At the end of the day, Marlin is a decentralized computing network, and many applications require high-performance computing. Today, due to computing limitations, dapps are designed in a way that they can either run entirely on-chain (hence limited functionality) or rely on trusted parties to move key components off-chain. Verifiable off-chain computing networks open up a whole new paradigm of asynchronous programming.
For example
Oyster can be used in areas such as AI, MEV, deploying matching engines or order book exchanges.
The DAO could deploy a liquidation or MEV bot where MEV profits could be returned to the DAO.
Programmability can be brought to Bitcoin through coprocessors. In the field of decentralized frontends, Marlin's integration with 3DNS is very cutting-edge, as DAOs can own domains and deploy backend servers, and future variants will have more expressive and flexible ones.
Not limited to any blockchain VM. No blockchain-like data structures have to be used. You can just code normally in any language and let people perform functions in a trustless and verifiable way. This is how the next generation of dApps will be deployed. Even existing dApps on L1 and L2 can use this feature to implement functions that were not possible before. What are the future plans for Marlin Protocol? How will it expand its influence? We believe that decentralized computing networks will play a key role in powering decentralized services. AI-based use cases are just the beginning. We can consider using Oyster to develop coprocessors to bring programmability to Bitcoin. For Kalypso, we are exploring the possibility of refactoring using a symbiotic system to reduce the security cost of the protocol. We encourage developers to try Oyster and Kalypso, participate in hackathons, and contact us if you need any kind of ecosystem support.
