Introduction to NKN
A project aiming to rebuild the Internet that will be truly open, decentralized, dynamic, safe, shared and owned by the community.
Welcome to NKN! Watch a 2-minutes video of NKN concept to get started.
- Abstract
- Challenges of Network Infrastructure
- Vision
- Technology Foundations
- New Kind of Network
- Cellular Automata Powered Consensus
- Conclusions
NKN is a new generation of highly scalable, self-evolving and self-incentivized blockchain network infrastructure. NKN addresses the network decentralization and self-evolution by introducing Cellular Automata (CA) methodology. NKN tokenizes network connectivity and data transmission capacity by a novel and useful Proof of Work. NKN focuses on decentralizing network resources, similar to how Bitcoin and Ethereum decentralize computing power as well as how IPFS and Filecoin decentralize storage. Together, they form the three pillars of the Internet infrastructure for next generation blockchain systems. NKN ultimately makes the network more decentralized, efficient, equalized, robust and secure, thus enabling healthier, safer, and more open Internet.
After years of transmutation, the Internet is in danger of losing its original vision and spirit. For example, Network Neutrality is overturned; spectrum and bandwidth are not efficiently utilized; information is fragmented and can be censored; privacy protection is limited. These signal that the network needs a reform. Existing solutions are not suitable for next generation blockchain systems due to the following reasons:
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Utilize a centralized approach to improve efficiency.
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Sacrifice the scalability of the network to speed up consensus.
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Limit participation rate of nodes or require authorization to increase "security".
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Use purely financial motivations or trusted third parties to solve problems which should be solved by mathematics and technology.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks currently face several major challenges, which are the opportunities for NKN. First static network topology is vulnerable to faulty and malicious attack. Second, there is no economic self-incentivized scheme for network connectivity and data transmission. Finally, network scalability is widely sacrificed to enhance controllability.
A highly reliable, secure and diverse Internet is essential to everyone. Yet, huge inefficiency exists in the current network when providing global connectivity and information transmission. It's time to rebuild the network we want, not just patch the network we have. A fully decentralized and anonymous peer-to-peer system offers huge potential in terms of improved efficiency, sustainability and safety for industry and society.
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a measure to remove the net neutrality rules by the end of 2017, a demand of ending our reliance on big telecommunication monopolies and building decentralized, affordable, locally owned Internet infrastructure becomes ever stronger. The unrestricted and private Internet access environment is becoming unsustainable under an endless stream of attacks and blockage, leading to selective and biased information propagation. Without a proper incentivizing engagement scheme, it is almost impossible to maintain a constant and secured information propagation channel.
Furthermore, Internet has become fragmented due to various reasons. This not only exacerbates separation but also negatively impacts innovation of science, technology and economy.
NKN intends to revolutionize the entire network technology and business. NKN wants to be the Uber or Airbnb of the trillion-dollar communication service business, but without a central entity. NKN aspires to free the bits, and build the Internet we always wanted.
NKN sets the following objectives:
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Any node can connect to this fully open network from any place
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Promote network sharing
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Secure net neutrality from network layer innovations
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Always keep network open and scalable
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Perform efficient and dynamic routing
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Tokenize network connectivity and data transmission assets and incentivize participating nodes
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Design and build the next generation of blockchain network
By blockchainizing the third and probably the last pillar of Internet infrastructure, NKN will revolutionize the blockchain ecosystem by innovating on the network layer, after Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchainized computing power as well as IPFS and Filecoin blockchainized storage. The next generation blockchains based on NKN are capable of supporting new kind of decentralized applications (DApp) which have much more powerful connectivity and transmission capability. The vision of NKN is not only to revolutionize the decentralized network layers, but also to develop core technologies for the next generation blockchain.
NKN builds upon several innovative elementary components that are different from existing solutions.
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Blockchainizing the remaining core building blocks of computing infrastructure.
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Cellular Automata powered decentralized data transmission network (DDTN).
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Cellular Automata driven consensus.
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Proof of Relay, A Useful Proof of Work.
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Tokenization of network connectivity and data transmission capability.
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Networking toolkit for fast and painless DApp development.
With NKN, DApp developers now have a new networking toolkit to build truly decentralized applications rapidly and painlessly. DApp developers can focus entirely on the ideas and innovation, UI (user interface) /UX (user experience), and business logic that make their product successful to the end users. They no longer need to wade through the wild jungle of blockchain, cryptography, consensus mechanism, identity and security before they even write one line of code for their users.
For example, in traditional app development with centralized SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings, one can host app on cloud computing platforms, store data on cloud storage, use web services for text message, phone call and payment. In the decentralized blockchain world, it is already conceivable today to build a new kind of Facebook by using Ethereum /NEO for computing, IPFS for storage, and NKN for networking. The beauty of this new paradigm is that users will personally own their identity and data, and can be both consumer and provider in the entire system as well. On top of that, at each layer there are built-in self-incentivized mechanism to maximize the network effect and bootstrap the entire community.
NKN will be one of the three foundational elements and play a critical role in this decentralized paradigm.
NKN utilizes microscopic rules based on Cellular Automata to define network topology, achieves self-evolution behaviors, and explores Cellular Automata driven consensus, which is fundamentally different from existing blockchain network layer.
As a powerful tool to study complex systems, Cellular Automaton is closely linked to philosophical categories such as simple and complex, micro and macro, local and global, finite and infinite, discrete and continuous, etc.
Cellular Automata (CA) is a state machine with a collection of nodes, each changing its state following a local rule that only depends on its neighbors. Each node only has a few neighbor nodes. Propagating through local interactions, local states will eventually affect the global behavior of CA. The desired openness of network is determined by the homogeneity of Cellular Automata where all nodes are identical, forming a fully decentralized P2P (peer-to-peer) network. Each node in the NKN network is constantly updating based on its current state as well as the states of neighbors. The neighbors of each node are also dynamically changing so that the network topology is also dynamic without changing its underlying infrastructure and protocols.
NKN utilizes CA to achieve efficient, decentralized, and dynamical topology such that information and data can be transmitted efficiently and dynamically without centralized connectivity.
The Cellular Automata programming formula is called "local rule", which is an indispensable rule for next generation network of NKN and has an important influence on the network topology. Proper choice of local rules leads to Cellular Automata with complex but self-organized behaviors on the boundary between stability and chaos. Rules are essential because they are formulas to program Cellular Automata and Automata Networks.
The NKN team believes CA-based or CA-driven systems are more natural and organic than current approaches utilizing static and fully connected topology. Complex systems with such a simple structure are closer to natural systems, thus enabling self-evolution.
NKN is the next generation of peer to peer network infrastructure built upon blockchain technology backed by Cellular Automata theory aiming at revolutionizing the Internet with true decentralization and native token incentive mechanism.
NKN introduced the concept of Decentralized Data Transmission Network (DDTN). DDTN combines multiple independent and self-organized relay nodes to provide clients with connectivity and data transmission capability. This coordination is decentralized and does not require trust of any involved parties. The secure operation of NKN is achieved through a consensus mechanism that coordinates and validates the operations performed by each node. DDTN provides a variety of strategies for decentralized application (DApp).
In contrast to centralized network connectivity and data transmission, there are multiple efficient paths between nodes in DDTN, which can be used to enhance data transmission capacity. Native tokens can incentivize the sharing of network resources, and eventually minimize wasted connectivity and bandwidth. Such a property is termed "self-incentivized".
As the pioneering cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is generated by mining, a Proof of Work mechanism that incentivizes miners to verify transactions by solving difficult hashing problems. The downside of Bitcoin mining is that efficient mining requires specialized and expensive hardware and consumes a lot of energy. According to Digiconomist, Bitcoin energy consumption rate is close to 50 TWh/year at mid February 2018 and still increasing, while the number is close to 14 TWh/year for Ethereum. Electricity consumed by these two cryptocurrencies combined has surpassed the electricity usage of many countries.
A way to prove the work while avoiding waste of resources is highly desired. NKN proposes an alternative to the current PoW by providing a more decentralized, dynamically evolving, self-organizing and self-evolving network infrastructure and designing a whole new set of consensus mechanisms. The novel PoW does not result in a waste of resources. Instead, it is a peer-to-peer sharing mechanism at blockchain level. Participants receive rewards by contributing more network resources than they consume. NKN uses Proof of Relay mechanism to guarantee network connectivity and data transmission capacity.
Cellular Automata on Networks (CAoN) is a natural extension of Cellular Automata that is able to model networks with non-geometric neighbor connections. It is powerful when modeling networks whose topology is evolving based on local rules. As the goal is to build a decentralized blockchain system with dynamic topology, CAoN is a natural model for the system.
Due to the dynamical nature of NKN, network topology between nodes is constantly updating. Proper updating mechanism is critical to achieve decentralization of the resulting topology. If, for example, the updating mechanism is chosen such that a newly joined node has higher chance to choose node with more neighbors to be its neighbor, and the probability to choose a node is proportional to the degree of that node, then the resulting network will be scale-free: the degree distribution follows a power law form. Such networks have centralized hubs defined by nodes with huge degree. Although hubs could potentially increase efficiency, they make network less robust as the failure of hubs will have much larger impact than the failure of other nodes.
One of the NKN's goals is to design and build networks that are decentralized while still being efficient in information transmission. This should be done by using a proper topology updating mechanism that considers both algorithm and incentive. On the algorithm side, neighbors should be sampled and chosen randomly; on the incentive side, reward for data transmission should be sublinear (grows slower than linear function) so that hubs are discouraged. Sparse random network is one possible topology that could be generated from such mechanism. It is decentralized and thus robust to the failure of any node, while still being efficient in routing due to its small network diameter.
Nodes in blockchain are peers due to the decentralized nature of blockchain. The inherent lack of trust in blockchain systems is particularly noteworthy because any node can send any information to any nodes in the blockchain. Peers must evaluate information and make agreement on their actions for blockchain to work properly.
NKN is designed to be a futuristic blockchain infrastructure that requires low latency, high bandwidth, extremely high scalability and low cost to reach consensus. These properties are crucial for future DApps. Thus, NKN needs new consensus algorithms that could satisfy such high requirements.
Cellular Automata (CA) is naturally a large distributed system with only local connections. The asymptotic behavior of the system is controlled by its updating rule. It is possible to achieve guaranteed global consensus in CA using message passing algorithm based only on sparse local neighbors for a set of updating rules.
Majority Vote Cellular Automata (MVCA) is a Cellular Automata using majority vote as updating rule.
Using the mathematical framework originally developed for Ising model in physics, we found and proved that a class of CA rules will guarantee to reach consensus in at most O(N) iterations using only states of sparse neighbors by an exact map from CA to zero temperature Ising model. Some studies investigated the fault tolerance of Cellular Automata and how to increase robustness in Cellular Automata-Based systems. We further showed that the result is robust to random and malicious faulty nodes and compute the threshold when desired consensus cannot be made.
Consensus in NKN is driven by Proof of Relay (PoR), a useful Proof of Work (PoW) where the expected rewards a node gets depend on its network connectivity and data transmission power. Node proves its relay workload by adding digital signature when forwarding data, which is then accepted by the system through consensus algorithm.
PoR is not a waste of resources since the work performed in PoR benefits the whole network by providing more transmission power. The "mining" is redefined as contributing to the data transmission layer, and the only way to get more rewards is providing more transmission power. The competition between nodes in the network will eventually drive the system towards the direction of low latency, high bandwidth data transmission network.
PoR is used for both token mining and transaction verification. On the one hand, token will be rewarded to nodes for data transmission; on the other hand, the expected reward for transaction verification may also depend on PoR, either through election or difficulty adjustment.
Since NKN is designed with attack prevention in mind, it is necessary to review related attack types. Attack analysis and mitigation will be one of the important aspects of NKN development and future work.
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Double spending attack. Double spending attack refers to the case where the same token is spent more than once. In classic blockchain systems, nodes prevent double-spending attack by consensus to confirm the transaction sequence.
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Sybil Attacks. Sybil attack refers to the case where malicious node pretends to be multiple users. Malicious miners can pretend to deliver more copies and get paid. Physical forwarding is done by creating multiple Sybil identities, but only transmitting data once.
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Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks. An off-line resource centric attack is known as a denial of service attack (DoS). For example, an attacker may want to target a specific account and prevent the account holder from posting transactions.
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Quality-of-Service (QoS) Attacks. Some attackers want to slow down the system performance, potentially reducing the amount of network connectivity and data transfer speed.
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Eclipse Attack. An attacker controls the P2P communication network and manipulates a node's neighbors so that it only communicates with malicious nodes. The vulnerability of the network to eclipse attack depends on the peer sampling algorithm, and can be reduced by carefully choosing neighbors.
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Selfish Mining Attacks. In a selfish mining strategy, the selfish miners maintain two blockchains, one public and one private. Initially, the private blockchain is the same as the public blockchain. The attacker always mine on the private chain, unless the length of the private chain is being caught up by the public chain, in which case the attacker publishes the private chain to get rewards. The attack essentially lower the threshold of 51% attack as it may be more efficient for other miners to mine the private chain than the public chain. Yet, as an economic attack, selfish mining attack needs to be announced in advance to attract miners.
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Fraud Attacks. Malicious miners can claim large amounts of data to be transmitted but efficiently generate data on-demand using applets. If the applet is smaller than the actual amount of relay data, it increases the likelihood of malicious miners getting block bonus.
First, NKN is an ideal networking platform for developing decentralized applications. DApp developers can be completely focused on the creative ideas and innovations that make their products successful for end users, as well as business logic. They no longer need to worry about details of network infrastructure.
Second, NKN incentive model encourages more people to join the network to share and enhance network connectivity and data transmission, changing the entire network structure and creating a huge market. NKN is targeting the trillion-dollar telecommunications business, and aim to provide better connectivity to everyone by incentivize the sharing of unused networking resources, expanding and revolutionize the sharing network.
Compare to current systems, NKN blockchain platform is more suitable for peer-to-peer data transmission and connectivity. In the meantime, this self-incentivized model encourages more nodes to join the network, build a flat network structure, implement multi-path routing, and create a new generation of network transmission structure.
From the perspectives of computing infrastructure innovation, NKN will revolutionize the blockchain ecosystem by blockchainizing the third and probably the last pillar of Internet infrastructure, after Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchainized computing power as well as IPFS and Filecoin blockchainized storage. Complementing the other two pillars of the blockchain revolution, NKN will be the next generation decentralized network that is self-evolving, self-incentivized, and highly scalable.
NKN is a strategic exploration and innovation of the general network layer infrastructure delivering the next generation network to other fields. A highly reliable, secure and decentralized Internet is essential so that every individual and every industry can achieve their full potential in the digital world. NKN will offer tremendous potential for achieving a fully decentralized peer-to-peer system to make the Internet more efficient, sustainable and secure.
The current network has huge inefficiencies for providing universal connectivity and access for all information and applications. It's time to rebuild the network we really need instead of constantly patching the networks we already own. Let's start building the future Internet, today.