What is Solana State Proof?
Solana and the =nil; Foundation recently announced their Solana State Proof Generator. State Proof could change the way users and developers’ transactions work under the hood on the Solana network, allowing for a whole new method of decentralised app (dApp) development and building.
Let’s have a look at what all this means!
What is State Proof?
A State Proof is a short description of a particular database’s state (like Solana’s light-client state), which allows developers and applications to utilise a subset of a cluster’s data without copying and verifying the entire state. A State Proof is a cryptographically secure piece of data that can be used to allow validators to verify state validity and truth with only a limited and compact bit of information.
Essentially, State Proof proves that the data is valid, and achieves that via cryptography.
Why is it necessary?
When visualising a truly decentralised digital world, the ability to access any protocol’s data needs to be trustless, while also reliable and secure. With centralised control not being a factor, and no centralised entity to “trust”, State Proof could not only be helpful, but necessary. The bare basic concept of State Proofs is the main application here. Simply put, by using State Proof, Solana devs and users are able to have a simple way to have provable Solana data access.
For Solana, this is all made possible via =nil;‘s trustless data management protocol, which allows for the seamless read and write access from and to a database through state and query proofs.
Specifically, Solana uses =nil;’s “DROP DATABASE *”, which you can read more about in this thread:
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Ability to access protocols data needs to be trustless, reliable and secure.
=nil;'s trustless data management protocol provides seamless read and write access from and to various databases (e.g. Bitcoin) through state and query proofs: https://t.co/Zx1GK0jqOA pic.twitter.com/2AkzfQwsw7
— =nil; Foundation (@nil_foundation) August 15, 2022
Bridging and scaling benefits of State Proof
The second biggest use-case for this is trustless bridging. The use of State Proof eliminates the need for trusted relayers to transfer data to and from Solana or any other system. State Proof allows the data to be bridged directly, in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) fashion.
And moving on from that, the third State Proof use-case is scaling. State proofs allow application specific scaling, while at the same time maintaining composability with the base L1 network, in this case, Solana. How does this work?
This could allow anyone to make their own application-specific Solana instance, and get it fully operational, while still maintaining access to the original Solana data. This would mean that the app specific instance would experience less congestion, and incur much smaller fees. State proofs via =nil; allow for that type of pluggable, composable, scaling.
All in all, State Proof is an implementation that could help Solana, as well as other networks that utilise it, in many different ways. To learn more about what the =nil; Foundation is doing, visit their page here.
And if you would like to see the Solana State Proof generator in action, go here.
What is =nil; Foundation?
=nil; Foundation was established in April of 2018 to facilitate and support research and development in database management systems and applied cryptography. With it’s internal teams =nil;Foundation intends to create a tightly integrated set of technologies becoming a basis for secure data storages operating in insecure environments.
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