Blockless Network: Assembling Web3's Infrastructure Legos
introducing the industry's first tech-agnostic, full-service de-cloud platform
(M31 Capital led Blockless’s recent seed round)
Blockless is the first platform for modular applications that offers user-powered, decentralized, and serverless hosting as well as other trustless off-chain cloud resources such as GPU, CPU, storage, and a variety of verification options. The platform provides applications a one-stop-shop for all of their modular infrastructure needs - across any blockchain ecosystem.
Modular Infrastructure Needs Aggregation & Distribution
Long before I met the Blockless team and heard their vision, I felt web3 applications needed a modular infrastructure aggregator. Much like Chainlink is building a one-stop-shop for middleware services, I felt infrastructure (blockchain modules, off-chain cloud resources, verification mechanisms, etc.) also needed a technology-neutral platform for web3 applications to easily plug-and-play with.
To-date, the modular thesis has been told from the point of view of the blockchain: modular vs. monolithic, enshrined vs sovereign rollups, Validiums vs. Celestiums, and so on. But if blockchains ultimately serve applications, shouldn’t each piece of the modular stack be easily accessible for applications to quickly rip-and-replace for the latest and greatest? If so, this would require a “homebase” for application deployment, that is sufficiently decentralized and fault tolerant, and able to integrate with any VM, programming language, consensus mechanism, hardware type, etc.
Enter Blockless Network
Blockless is a blockchain-agnostic platform for web3 applications, enabling seamless integration with all modular infrastructure technologies. The project’s vision is to become the industry standard for web3 application deployment, serverless hosting powered by users, and other trustless off-chain cloud resources. The end result is Network Neutral Applications (nnApps) that work across any L1/L2 network without being constrained by any particular blockchain limitation such as latency, cost, and smart contract capabilities.
Web3 Problem (Long-Term)
Web3’s opensource and permissionless architecture allows builders to iterate and compound technological progress at an unprecedented rate. While this progress obviously has its benefits, the downside is that protocols become obsolete at a much faster pace than web2 peers. Layer 1 blockchains undergo step-function scalability improvements every ~2 years, and the modular era now extends this issue to each section of the tech stack. Why should applications, the products users actually get utility from, be limited by the rigid rulesets of the networks that need them? Blockchain ecosystems and modules have a wide variety of programming languages, virtual machines, consensus mechanisms, APIs, etc., so hopping to the latest infrastructure breakthrough is manual and tedious for developers and can take over a year to complete (e.g. dYdX spent a year transitioning from Ethereum to Cosmos SDK).
Blockless Solution (Long-Term)
The platform aims to solve multiple problems, but at its core, it will enable applications to future-proof their underlying infrastructure by abstracting away the various underlying tech complexities, making each segment of the stack modular, interoperable, and not dependent on each other. This will allow applications to seamlessly rip and replace certain pieces of the network when newer technology emerges, and older modules become obsolete. This new infrastructure-agnostic architecture will power “Network Neutral Applications” (nnApps).
Web3 Problem (Near-Term)
The initial version of the Blockless Network will focus on two more specific problems:
Restaking promises to revolutionize blockchain security but is currently extremely difficult to onboard to.
Web3 applications have notoriously struggled with token value accrual models.
Blockless Solution (Near-Term)
The first iteration of the network will:
Offer a platform that allows application and middleware protocols fast and easy onboarding to restaking protocols (like EigenLayer).
Enable users of web3 application to automatically contribute consumer-grade compute (laptop, phone, etc.) and stake native application tokens to the Blockless Network in return for a share of the application’s underlying infrastructure spend. This will help web3 applications accrue more value to their native tokens, which have historically struggled to do so.
Investment Thesis
Modularity from the perspective of the application; abstracting away the complex technical disparities across ecosystem technologies and future proofing underlying Web3 infrastructure.
Allows users of web3 applications to automatically contribute cloud resources (for compensation) just by using apps (no setup or technical expertise required), helping applications accrue value to their native tokens.
First web3 platform to orchestrate and optimize application computational workloads by hardware specification, geolocation, existing workloads, computation type, and node performance history.
Its potential TAM is the size of the entire web3 industry, across all ecosystems and end-markets.
Given its technological neutrality, Blockless can be successful regardless of which settlement layer, execution layer, verification mechanism, and application use-cases end up winning.
Technical Design
At the heart of the Blockless Network is the orchestration layer, which organizes and optimizes network workloads and data flows through the various layers of the network. It’s currently secured by PoA on a cosmos app-chain but will eventually add EigenLayer restaked security to optimize network stability.
Dynamic Resource Matching (DRM): Since users on the Blockless Network can provide compute resources to applications simply by using them, the pool of user devices (network nodes) will vary in hardware specifications and capacity. There may be dedicated machines capable of ML training, desktop computers primarily used for gaming or video editing, or laptops and smartphones used for browsing the web and conducting various on-chain activities. Blockless’s Dynamic Resource Matching (DRM) is the industry’s first comprehensive sorting mechanism used to categorize these devices and match them individually to the most suitable computational task.
Each computational request in the network initiates a selection process to identify online nodes meeting the task’s basic requirements. This step ensures that less capable devices, such as home PCs, are not burdened with complex computations like generating Zero-Knowledge proofs. It also ensures that lighter tasks aren’t allocated to large servers if smaller devices can handle the workload more efficiently.
Further refinement is achieved through a Simulated Annealing (SA)-based evaluation, pinpointing the most reliable and capable devices for specific computations. This evaluation considers factors such as response time and hardware specifications and simulates how each device/node would perform for a particular computation. The evaluation process also takes into account the historical performance of a node, giving poorly performing nodes lower rankings and receiving less work as a result.
These coordinated steps form part of how Blockless efficiently manages various computations while upholding stringent standards for the security, reliability, and performance of the network.
To mitigate the risk of malicious behavior on the network, Blockless employs a randomized distribution algorithm for task allocation. This strategy addresses a potential vulnerability where bad actors with abundant compute resources who are familiar with the dynamic resource matching described in the section above, might anticipate and exploit their likely allocation of compute-intensive tasks (like ML inference). The algorithm utilizes a Greco-Latin square distribution method, ensuring an even and resource-aware task distribution among the selected nodes. That means that within the group of optimal nodes selected for any particular task, only some are chosen. This approach prevents nodes from predicting their receipt of any particular task, enhancing the integrity of the network.
WASM Secure Runtime: In order to maintain a stable network, Blockless incorporates a Web-Assembly (WASM) secure runtime to establish a distinct separation between the computational tasks and the broader activities of the node device. This secure runtime ensures that specific system resources (like CPU, GPU and RAM) are exclusively allocated for Blockless Network applications. As a result, even when the node device is engaged in resource-intensive activities like video editing, streaming or gaming, the performance and efficiency of Blockless applications remain unaffected.
Additionally, this secure runtime maintains confidentiality and integrity by shielding the node machine from accessing or altering the runtime’s internal processes. It also safeguards against excessive resource consumption and unauthorized access to sensitive data by the application.
Web-Assembly’s versatile runtime enables Blockless to support applications built on a wide range of mainstream programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, Go, and Rust, thus broadening its accessibility, and making it easy for developers to integrate their work.
Dynamic Verification Mechanism: In addition to randomized distribution and WASM secure runtime, which ensures security and fault tolerance, Blockless offers applications an additional verification mechanism for each computational task. This modular approach enables the processing of a diverse range of computations efficiently, based on the needs of each computation.
For tasks such as retrieving price feeds for Bitcoin, Blockless nodes can collate their findings and calculate a weighted average, ensuring an accurate and reliable result. For tasks that yield binary (yes/no) outcomes, employing consensus algorithms like Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (pBFT) or RAFT for node voting is more suitable, ensuring optimal decision-making. Different computations necessitate different methods of consensus and verification, and Blockless serves as both the orchestrator and computational layer for these.
To verify the computations were carried out correctly, Blockless nodes can also generate Zero-Knowledge Proofs as a final verification step. This multi-layered and modular approach to verification ensures that applications on Blockless are backed by robust and sound computations, enhancing trust and reliability within the network.
Supply-side hardware nodes must stake tokens to contribute to the network. Any native nnApp token can be used (for payments as well) but those who use Blockless tokens will receive price discounts. Applications that use their own native token can share the infrastructure revenue with app users who stake & contribute compute to the supply-side (any consumer device can work). This mechanism increases value accrual for native application tokens who have historically struggled to do so.
TAM & Roadmap
Competition
Blockless is creating a new infrastructure category so there are no direct web3 competitors to-date. Instead, the project mainly competes against web2 centralized cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, who offer convenience and ease-of-use at the expense of decentralization, composability, and application value capture.
Blockless will essentially act as a modular infrastructure distributor to web3 applications, so although applications can source modules directly from third-party vendors (execution layers, off-chain compute, ZK verification, etc.), Blockless aims to be more of a partner than competitor to such vendors, concentrating demand for more convenient access.
While the rest of the market focuses on building and investing in the next-generation infrastructure module, Blockless is focused on creating the go-to platform for applications to easily integrate with the full modular stack, across all ecosystems and technologies.
If you’re an application developer or infrastructure provider looking to benefit from the advantages of Blockless’s modular infrastructure layer, please reach out!
Good article.......I'm not a technical person, but still understood most of article.