Filecoin implements four clients, making the system more secure

Filecoin has implemented four clients, and the system and ecology will be more secure and complete.

Recently, Filecoin's project team Protocol Labs released a piece of information that seems inconspicuous but is actually very important:

The Filecoin protocol has two more client implementations: Forest, developed by the ChainSafe team in Rust, and Fuhon, developed by the Soramitsu team in C++. So far, Filecoin has a total of four clients:

Go-filecoin developed in Go language;

Lotus, developed in Go;

Forest developed in Rust;

Fuhon is developed in C++;

This is very important for decentralized projects based on blockchain. What does it mean that Filecoin has four clients?

In layman's terms, we can understand it this way: if there is a very important cargo that needs to be transported from Beijing to Guangzhou, this cargo is so important that the risk during transportation must be minimized as much as possible.

We have two solutions to this problem: one solution is to use four vehicles, each of which carries the same cargo, but all four vehicles take the same route; the other solution is to use four vehicles, each of which carries the same cargo, but each of the four vehicles takes a different route.

Obviously, from the perspective of safety and risk diversification, we will definitely choose the second option, because if we use the first option, once that road is blocked, all four cars will not be able to reach the destination. If we use the second option, we will not be able to reach the destination unless all four roads are blocked.

The same is true in the case of Filecoin. Having four clients means there are four different paths that can be used to run the Filecoin system. Even if one, two, or three clients fail, as long as there is one client that is good, the entire Filecoin system can still operate normally; if there is only one client, then once this client fails, the entire Filecoin system will be paralyzed.

This is a decentralization method commonly used in blockchain system development.

Any software has vulnerabilities, which is why hackers always exist and can always find vulnerabilities in software.

In a public blockchain, if all nodes in the entire system only run one client software at the same time, then once a vulnerability in this client is discovered by a hacker and used to attack the system, it means that all nodes in the entire system may be attacked, and the consequences will be extremely serious. This is a systemic risk of the blockchain and also a "centralized risk."

Therefore, in order to avoid this system risk, many blockchain public chain systems encourage the use of multiple clients.

Ethereum is a typical example in this regard.

Ethereum is currently running different clients. The two most popular client systems in the current Ethereum system are go-ethereum written in Go and Parity written in Rust.

Ethereum, which is supported by these two systems, has experienced a major test: on the eve of the Ethereum DevCon2.0 development conference in 2016, hackers discovered a vulnerability in the go-ethereum client and used a large amount of spam to attack, causing a large number of go-ethereum clients to crash, with only Parity surviving. In this attack, if Ethereum only had one client, go-ethereum, the consequences would be disastrous.

In Ethereum 2.0, which is currently under development, this approach of running multiple clients to avoid system risks has been fully utilized: there are now 8 teams developing Ethereum clients in different languages ​​at the same time, which means that after Ethereum 2.0 goes online in the future, the entire network may be running 8 different clients.

If hackers want to attack Ethereum 2.0, they must discover problems in these eight clients at the same time and attack them simultaneously, which would be unimaginably difficult.

The emergence of Filecoin's four clients not only shows that Filecoin's system security will be greatly enhanced, but also shows that more and more teams are optimistic about and support the Filecoin project, which is a great benefit for Filecoin enthusiasts and supporters.