Fiducia Network - overview
Fiducia Network is a distributed blockchain data oracle and cloud computing network. The root of the project stems from the team working on some advanced blockchain applications. The lack of reliable and verifiable data source for blockchain application left the team to develop its own distributed blockchain data oracle network. Fiducia Network is thus borne out of necessity.
By now, the tech community is aware of the promise of blockchain applications. But what is little known is the fact that most of the data in the world is inaccessible to blockchain applications. What could be done simply with an API call in the realm of Internet application development would be virtually impossible in blockchain application development.
Smart contracts need to be completely deterministic to ensure that all nodes in a network execute the same code. Therefore, by design mainstream blockchains, such as Ethereum, does not support input of data from non-deterministic sources such as APIs or websites, as with each API call at different times, the input data retrieved could be different.
As a result, smart contracts are mostly isolated from the rest of the world, which dramatically reduces their potential.
Fiducia Network protocol aims to create a data network that connects smart contracts to any online data source in a decentralized manner. These sources include, but are not limited to, financial information, credentials, computing results from off-chain computing platforms, and other blockchains.
Fiducia Network is composed of three major component systems:
FID is a module based blockchain framework that allows for deployment of purpose-built or industry-specific blockchain. FID is interoperable with other blockchain systems through interconnected bridges and inter-blockchain protocols.
FCN enables applications with large processing power requirements to be run on any number of computers, in order to dramatically reduce their processing time. FCN offers two use cases:
a) Serverless Function Tasks - cloud based execution of simpler modules. Serverless functions are hosted in the cloud that perform specific tasks.
b) Grid Computation Tasks - full fledged applications that can be executed in grid computation nodes.
REI is the connection between FID blockchain nodes and the GCN grid computing network. Computational tasks are from FID to GCN through the remote execution interface and results from the GCN to the FID.
Through REI, the FID blockchain nodes have access to extended APIs for communicating with the external world:
Ability to submit transactions (either signed or unsigned) to the chain to publish computation results.
A fully-featured HTTP client allowing the worker to access and fetch data from external services.
Access to the local keystore to sign and verify statements or transactions.
REI can be initiated from within a special function in the FID node execution instruction. The function is executed after each block import. To communicate computation results back to FID, FCN can submit signed or unsigned transactions to be included in subsequent blocks.
Results from FCN are not subject to regular FID block transaction verification. A specific computation verification mechanism (e.g. voting, averaging, checking sender signatures, etc.) should be implemented to determine what information gets into the chain. FID and FCN offer modules for developers to specify the computation verification mechanism of their choice.
Fiducia Network adopts the architectural principle of loose coupling. Each sub-system should have high performance and cohesion individually. Between the subsystems, Fiducia Network adopts standards based interprocess and network communication protocols.
Loose coupling frees computation from block generation cycles of the FID blockchain, thus making cloud computing and data access possible. At the same time, FID blockchain provides the benefits of a trust-less and distributed governance structure.
