Part 01: The Need for Boundless in the Blockchain World
In the world of blockchains, things can get slow and expensive. Blockchains, which are supposed to be secure and decentralized, can often become bogged down when they try to handle complex computations. Imagine trying to calculate something very complicated, but your computer doesn’t have the power to do it all on its own. That’s where a system like Boundless comes in to help.
Boundless is a new kind of solution that uses technology called "zero-knowledge proofs" (ZKPs). These proofs allow one computer to verify something another computer has done without actually needing to see the details of the work. This is important because, on a regular blockchain, every little task has to be calculated by every participant, which slows everything down. Boundless uses a method that lets certain tasks be processed somewhere else — off-chain — and only the result is checked on-chain, which is faster and cheaper.
By using this technology, Boundless takes the heavy lifting of computing out of the blockchain and lets it be done by a separate network of computers known as prover nodes. These prover nodes work together, creating proofs that they did the work correctly. They then send these proofs to the blockchain, where it can be verified. This system is much quicker and less costly than making the blockchain itself do all the hard work.
Think of it like outsourcing your math homework to an expert, and the blockchain just checks that the answers are right without needing to go through the entire problem-solving process itself.