The short story is that we should be able to allocate the secure blockspace of the Polkadot network in a multitude of different ways, not just to long-term reserved slots. We would like to build out a number of these, like parathreads and short-term auctions, and allow projects to compose them into the blockspace they need.
Collators will be the purchasers of “Just-in-Time” or JIT blockspace used by parathreads, and any account should be able to participate in a short-term auction for blockspace. There is an interesting design space that emerges here which I’ll refer to as the “reimbursement layer”: ways that purchasers of blockspace on behalf of some chain can be reimbursed for their spend. I think the key insight here is that reimbursement for blockspace purchases can happen outside of the chain which received the blockspace.
Let’s discuss the topic of blockspace, blockspace allocation, collators, and reimbursement products here.
One implication of the reimbursement layer is that it opens up an opportunity for a Common Good Parachain, pallet, or smart contract where people can fund parathread blockspace and which handles the reimbursement of collators behind the scenes. It’d be something like a limit orderbook for blockspace, where orders are populated by on-chain funding and orders are filled by collators providing “proof of purchased blockspace”.
This could be a dead simple way to get started on Polkadot: upload Wasm, pay the deposit, and fund blockspace through a simple UI. Hackathons could even be used to give credits to projects which win, in the same way that AWS or Azure credits are given to winners.
Are Tannsi incubating projects as well as providing infrastructure?
To be a little reductive, if there is no full-service offering for teams, that covers the full range of challenges facing on-chain governed economies in a mainnet/relay environment, then this may end up like having a great keynote template for startups, but none of the soft-skills required to ease them through what is a highly complex process.
Clearly the paths to accessing block space is easing, but the challenges of making that blockspace useful still seems like a chasm but interested to see how it plays out.
“Fixed price bandwidth from the relay chain… we could then slice that up and then make it consumable on our layer one chain for messaging - like spectrum bandwidth you might think of spectrum auctions in the radio and tv world”
imo this analogy works really well and is something we’ve used historically to map a media model to a blockchain one, you can see quickly how a relay, parachain and collectives within a on-chain governance framework can map to media networks.
relay: network
parachain: channel
collective: show
I would like to point out my thoughts around blockspace, which might miss some information, so happy to get my point resolved.
The issue at hand is the allocation and pricing of blockspace, which, as we know, is a limited resource.
This creates an interesting economic dynamic where the value of the blockspace directly corresponds to the value it brings to users.
The Competitive Landscape
Here’s where things get tricky. Say you have a gaming vertical where users might want to carry out a microtransaction—like equipping a new weapon. On the other side, you have a DeFi vertical where users might be executing complex financial transactions, like staking an asset. Both of these activities compete for the same limited blockspace.
Assumption: Different products can Absorb Costs More Easily
Given that DeFi transactions often involve more significant amounts of money, they can generally pass on the cost of high blockspace fees to the consumer more easily than a gaming platform can. For a user who is staking thousands of dollars, a few dollars in transaction fees may not be a big deal. However, for a gamer making a microtransaction worth a few cents or dollars, even a small fee could be a dealbreaker.
The underlying assumption is that a blockchain focused on gaming is likely to have more frequent storage changes but each of those changes would typically generate less economic value compared to a DeFi-focused blockchain.
The Dilemma
So, the question is, does this economic structure inadvertently prioritize one kind of transaction over another? And is this sustainable in the long run? Could this create an imbalance where high-value financial transactions crowd out other use cases, making them economically unviable?
Is this a valid conclusion and does it put the gaming vertical at risk or do I miss parts of the blockspace understanding?
If a gamer doesn’t want to pay a few cents for his microtransaction (which makes total sense in most cases), it just means that this type of blockspace is not for them.
BUT
you have to consider that a gaming chain could buy the blockspace and then find more cost-efficient or user-friendly ways to partition it. E.g. gamers will have a problem paying cents for transactions, but won’t have a problem paying a 10 dollar monthly subscription to play game. This is where parachains come in to buy coretime and then find economic models to transform the blockspace into new products that are appealing to users.
What I would like to understand is, if the blockspace is calculated on top of the individual storage changes on each transaction, because then this economic structure inadvertently prioritizes one kind of transaction over another, and it will put equipping a sword on the same level as a defi staking order of 100$.
I agree there are plenty of models to compensate, but this disadvantage if it is not wrongly interpreted or understood from my side, will be a big challenge for microtransaction-based models. Like the Awesome Ajuna Avatars, which currently make 15% of the last 90 days signed transactions on Talisman.
There is a popular misunderstanding. The blockspace of a parachain is different from the blockspace of the relay chain. They are just very correlated atm, but this will change as we approach more dynamic blockspace allocation models.
What essentially is true is that everyone pays the same if you are buying blockspace on Polkadot. But that is transaction you do very seldom. Only when you transfer, stake, vote or maybe send a remark. Most of the blockspace is maybe used for parablock( header?)s.
If a parachain offers creates blocks, these are different from what relay chain blocks. So the value chain is like this:
the relay chain produces blockspace
the relay chain sells blockspace to parachains
the parachains use blockspace to store block( header?)s
What parachains put in their own blocks is completely up to them. So it is essentially a different blockspace offering. You can have transactions like equipping a sword that are totally free, as long as you keep it overall economical for the chain. Mangata for example offers gas-free swaps. To protect against spam, users have to lock tokens for 24 hours. But the cost for the blockspace needs to be subsidized by the chain in this case, since the parachain is also paying for its own blockworks.
Okay, if the cost of validating the storage transition of a parachain block is not part of the blockspace economy, and each parachain block is priced similarly for inclusion into the relay chain, then it’s just a matter of compensating with many microtransactions in one block, to compensate which makes a lot of sense for a gaming vertical.
