Marigold, one of the teams that works on testing and developing upgrades to the Tezos core protocol, just launched Deku-C, a sidechain featuring a Web Assembly (WASM) smart contract platform.
Blockchain protocols are distributed ledger softwares that operate on a set of core principles that allow and enable certain kinds of network activity. The Tezos code base that constitutes this set of core principles is sometimes referred to as the ‘Layer 1’ protocol, and given the decentralized nature of the blockchain, there are often certain constraints and limitations on how it can scale in terms of throughput, latency, transaction speed, and cost-effectiveness. But different kinds of Layer 2 protocols can be built that work alongside and communicate with the Tezos Layer 1 protocol to help scale network activity.
Marigold announced the release of the Deku-C betanet on the Tezos Ghostnet in a blog post authored by software engineer Daniel Hines. We've extracted some key sections below.
There are different kinds of Layer 2 capabilities on Tezos, among them rollups and sidechains:
A sidechain is a blockchain with a light client embedded in a host blockchain (the Layer 1). This light client forms a bridge between the two networks, allowing assets to move onto and off of the Layer 2 - in this aspect sidechains are similar to rollups.
As with rollups, sidechains are used to scale. But while rollups are bounded by the L1’s bandwidth and are primarily used to scale computational power, sidechains are more flexible, allowing us to choose virtually any point in the design space of consensus algorithms and blockchain implementations, which is very large.
Deku-C Sidechain
Deku-C, which Marigold just released in beta on the Tezos Ghostnet, is a side chain for Tezos:
In Deku’s case, we’ve focused on maximizing throughput and minimizing latency by using a modified Tendermint consensus algorithm, an un-Merkelized in-memory layout for storage, and exploiting OCaml 5’s multicore capabilities to parallelize as much hashing and cryptography as possible.
Any Tezos asset written to one of the FA standards can be deposited on the Deku-C sidechain via TzPortals by first being wrapped in the form of a ticket. The sidechain is written in Web Assembly:
making it easy for developers to access the Tezos ecosystem with Rust, C++, Go or any WASM-compiling language. Our compiler team has developed a Michelson to WASM compiler, enabling Ligo contracts to be deployed to Deku-C.
The latest version follows an OpenAPI specification, and, additionally, Marigold has built a Typescript library so that developers can more easily create dApps that interact with Deku-C.
To learn more about the Deku-C sidechain, check out the full blog post by Daniel Hines, on the Marigold website. To read and learn more about sidechains and Tezos Layer 2 technology in general, see some of the further documentation.
