It's not just about blockchain! How stateless infrastructure brings efficiency to decentralized networks

The active member of the Ethereum community, Polynya, wrote about the importance of Stateless infrastructure. They remind developers that decentralization is not limited to blockchain and that it is crucial to choose the most suitable tool based on the requirements, with Stateless infrastructure being a good option for many use cases.

This article is compiled and translated. For any doubts, please refer to the original text.

What is Stateless Infrastructure?

Network Without Emphasizing Consensus

While the concept of statelessness has multiple interpretations in the technical realm, in this article, Polynya considers blockchain incorporating Layer2 as the vehicle for achieving global consensus, where all nodes have the same latest state and consensus infrastructure; and infrastructure without consensus or with loose consensus rules is referred to as stateless infrastructure.

For example, Ethereum is a stateful infrastructure where all nodes record the same ledger, and any interaction with any node yields the same result, forming strong consensus based on the longest chain to ensure global consensus in the network.

On the other hand, IPFS is a typical stateless infrastructure where each node's recorded information may differ, leading to a lack of consensus. When a file is referenced, the node storing that data at that time needs to be online for successful data retrieval. Additionally, IPFS nodes selectively delete data that has not been used for a long time based on data access frequency to enhance efficiency. Although the IPFS network lacks consensus, it is relatively cost-effective, making it suitable for storing less critical data compared to blockchain.

Other common stateless infrastructures include BitTorrent, Farcaster Hubs, and ZK Auxiliary Processor ZK Coprocessors.

Stateless Infrastructure Only Requires One Honest Party

When discussing stateless infrastructure, a shift in perspective is necessary. In the blockchain world, people have become accustomed to the assumption of honest majority, hence running as many nodes as possible. However, outside of the blockchain, most things operate on the assumption of honest minority—if one honest party exists, everything will function normally.

For instance, in IPFS, as long as one operational node is willing to provide certain data, that data is accessible without needing to consider whether other nodes are willing to provide it.

The operation only requires one honest node, meaning that regardless of the number of nodes or execution speeds, the efficiency will far exceed the design architecture of blockchain, be it Layer1, Layer2, modular, etc. Stateless infrastructure fundamentally differs in this aspect.

Why is Stateless Infrastructure Needed?

Blockchain Efficiency Always Lags

Currently, blockchain's efficiency is extremely low, requiring tens of thousands of times more expenses for the same computation compared to centralized servers. Although new technologies such as effective proof and data availability sampling DAS can increase efficiency by thousands of times, the overall computational cost still cannot surpass that of centralized server structures.

Blockchain efficiency falls short of centralized servers, no matter how much the technology is improved.

By utilizing stateless infrastructure, industries can go further. With stateless infrastructure, parallel execution across multiple machines becomes much easier, exponentially enhancing decentralized networks to larger scales and efficiencies.

Products Cannot Solely Rely on Blockchain

A competitive and well-functioning product cannot rely solely on blockchain technology. Even for financial and identity applications that require global consensus the most, many components need other infrastructures, such as most computations, data storage generated during processes, which are better suited for centralized servers and IPFS storage.

Future products will be a combination of various technologies rather than solely emphasizing blockchain technology.

Stateless infrastructure and blockchain will not replace each other but complement each other to create competitive decentralized applications.

By integrating all these technologies, it becomes possible to create applications that were previously impossible.

Stateless Infrastructure Promotes Greater Decentralization

In fact, stateless infrastructure can be more decentralized than blockchain.

Achieving strict global consensus in blockchain is an extremely challenging process requiring an expensive Byzantine fault-tolerant mechanism and honest majority assumption. The cost of achieving global consensus results in the existing block production mechanism being dominated by the wealthy in PoS or corporate governance in PoW.

Blockchain mitigates this through node operation but still requires running on the assumption of honest majority, needing thousands of nodes for the flexibility in forming consensus.

In contrast, while stateless infrastructure may come in various forms, most are suitable for the assumption of honest minority — requiring only one honest node. Thus, the enhancement in efficiency can lead to further decentralization.

Stop Blindly Pursuing Blockchain Technology

If strict global consensus is not required, peer-to-peer stateless infrastructure is more efficient and decentralized than blockchain.

It's time to cease the endless pursuit of blockchain technology and consider what tools are truly suitable for addressing real needs and problems, or combining various infrastructures to create more complete and competitive products.

The important thing is to build useful Web3 applications, not the most efficient blockchain.