A Detailed Review Of Dxchain – BIG DATA MEETS BLOCKCHAIN
DxChain is the world’s first decentralized big data and machine learning network powered by a computing-centric blockchain with a native protocol token (also called “DX”).
With several major innovations, especially the revolutionary “Chains-on-chain” architecture design, Dxchain provides a comprehensive solution for running machine learning algorithms and businesses intelligence on big data and keeping data privacy with security.
History of Blockchain and DxChain Network Motivation
A blockchain is an undeniably ingenious technological invention at the heart of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is the brainchild of the person or group of people known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. A blockchain is a form of digitised and decentralised public ledger; it is used in all cryptocurrency transactions. The distributed ledger is a type of database that is shared, replicated and synchronised among the members of a network. It records the transactions, such as the exchange of assets or data, among the participants in the network.
Since the Bitcoin network started on January 2009, many other cryptocurrencies have emerged. The most popular consensus protocols are still based on the idea from Nakamoto either Proof of Work (PoW) Or Proof of Stake (PoS). However, the consensus-based protocol by Nakamoto uses a huge amount of computational power to maintain the blockchain itself but does not provide useful work for the community. Unfortunately, there are no existing solutions in the market to provide a decentralised parallel-computing environment that supports big data and machine learning. DxChain Network incorporates Hadoop with blockchain to fill this gap. DxChain Network is envisaged as a comprehensive platform that provides data storage, data exchange and big data computation for the data in the system.
Brief Introduction To DxChain Network
Functionally, the entire system is designed as a platform to provide big data and machine learning related computation services with the support of decentralised data storage services. Database query and business intelligence tasks are performed for data that could not be owned by any commercial company but can be traded and stored on the DxChain Network. This platform is designed to connect personal computers, as well as specifically-designed miner machines, to potentially facilitate easier data computation at a lower cost.
DxChain Network provides two fundamental capabilities: computation and storage. Currently, only big companies have the capability to run big data tasks, because not only can these companies afford expensive hardware but these companies also own most of the existing consumer data. For example, Google possesses the navigation data of whoever that uses Google Maps. If Google Maps users could find a way to sell their navigation data, then they will do so for economic reasons. Users will not worry about their privacy since the data has already been seen and used by Google. If third parties can sell navigation data, combined with other commercial data, then advertising campaigns will be more accurate and customised. Most importantly, big companies like Google and Facebook will not monopolise the usage of these data. This is the dream of decentralisation.
The DxChain Network is designed to serve as a data trading platform for users who want to sell their data. Big data and machine learning computation is intended to make the use of data easier and more flexible.
Its end users can potentially use this network as a data exchange platform to trade data and as a business intelligence analytics platform to analyse data for supporting business insights.
DxChain provides solutions to big data problems such as:
Maximize individual dataset to its capacity
Empower data subjects to control their own data
Protect personal data with flexibility
Support business intelligence and machine learning DApp
INNOVATIONS
DxChain is an innovative permissionless blockchain architecture that aims to meet the global-wise commercial standard.
The major innovations are:
1. CHAINS-ON-CHAIN ARCHITECTURE
DxChain Network provides decentralised big data and machine learning computation with the support of decentralised data storage. To achieve this complex project, the DxChain team is designing a specific chains-on-chain structure – which manages the master chain, storage chain and computation chain, to reach the consensus and to provide the incentive mechanism in a Byzantine environment.
The DxChain team is designing the three-chain structure with two unique properties:
a. Master and side chains structure
b. Immutable master chain and elastic side chains.
Property a. splits the chains according to their functions. Property b. solves the problems of scalability, throughput and latency of the blockchain.
The master chain is in charge of maintaining transactions. Based on experience from Bitcoin and Ethereum, this master chain is kept immutable.
The side chains in the DxChain Network are in charge of storage and computation.
These two functions are time-bounded, so that the blocks do not need to indefinitely store expired data. The DxChain team is designing a chain shortening algorithm which could remove unused data to save valuable block space.
The revolutionary Chains-on-chain architecture is designed to solve the data computation, storage, and privacy issues.
2. VERIFICATION GAME / COMPUTING
Most of the popular blockchains are used for financial activity transactions, so their computations are simply checking transactional records on the chains; this type of computation does not require a lot of resources. However, the computations running on the DxChain Network are intended to support more general-purpose processing, such as database query and MapReduce work. Bitcoin uses blockchain to store all its transaction records to achieve consensus in the network and this consensus needs more than half of the active nodes to agree. It is impossible to store all computation states in a blockchain to ensure computation consensus; therefore, the DxChain team uses two mechanisms to ensure the correctness of the computations; verification game algorithm and Provable Data Computations (PDC).
Verification game algorithm is designed as a system with three main types of rules: solver, verifier and judge. This interactive system can testify to the correctness of a computation procedure without wasting too much computation power.
Verification game provides a framework which securely perform any computational task and vastly reduces the number of redundant network node computations.
3. PDC (Provable Data Computation)
PDC is a statistical framework to verify the correctness of computation results with few copies of redundant computing.
Using verification game algorithm and PDC, DxChain Network is envisioned to solve the problems of outsourced computation and decentralised mining. Therefore, MapReduce work could potentially be performed on this platform.
4. PoSt & PDP
The proof of Spacetime(PoSt) is used as the consensus protocol of storage. It provides the foundation for the decentralized storage network.
5. DATA MODEL ENABLES PRIVACY PRESERVING
The DxChain Network supports data modelsfor structured datasets, so clients should encrypt columns containing sensitive data such as SSN before submitting their data to the network. The searchable columns should not be encrypted. The reason is that encrypted data must be decrypted before any computation is executed on it. For binary datasets such as MP3, clients should encrypt the entire file.
DxChain does not only provide the data storage function, but it also gives the flexibility of retrieving files at a more granular scale.
In conclusion, DxChain Network is a scalable, private and extensible blockchain dedicated to big data and machine learning, with its architecture and core technologies.
https://t.me/DxChainBot?start=z8jtzb-z8jtzb
Coins mentioned in post:
Well written article. Great project indeed.