Introduction to Flow Blockchain

NBA Top Shots (Fan NFTs) and CryptoKitties (crypto game) are some of the popular NFTs you probably have heard of in the crypto world. These cryptos work on the Flow Blockchain developed by Dapper Labs in 2019. However, CryptoKitties was earlier based on the Ethereum blockchain. Due to low scalability in Ethereum, CryptoKitties was unable to perform properly on the Ethereum blockchain. This led to the development of the Flow Blockchain.

In this blog, we'll dive into Flow Blockchain, its working, and its architecture.

What is Flow Blockchain?

Flow is focused on developing next-gen apps, games, and NFTs that are more scalable than the current blockchain out there. The design of the flow blockchain has been done in such a way that it doesn't use the sharding technique to scale the apps, resulting in a faster and more cost-efficient transaction.

Flow is focused on reducing the complexity of transactions. Other blockchains would involve multiple transactions in purchasing a single NFT, wherein, Flow would obtain the same output with a single tiny transaction in a single block.

How does Flow Blockchain work?

Every Blockchain works in its own way to validate the transactions. For instance, Ethereum uses the Proof-of-Stake mechanism to validate the transactions. However, its scaling and processing capabilities were not great when comes to a large number of transactions while keeping it cost-efficient. So Layer 2 came into the picture to solve this by handling the orders off-chain at a lower transaction cost and faster speed than the mainnet.

Flow blockchain works by splitting the transaction process into four different nodes, where each node has a role and responsibility to play. This node subdivision for scaling gives a better advantage than going off the mainnet for scalability.

Flow Node Architecture

Flow has divided the whole process into four nodes, where each node has a role and responsibility to play.

1. Collection Node:

These are the primary nodes in the architecture, responsible to manage the collected well-formed transaction by managing the pool of transactions. The well-formed transaction is then hashed and the node signs them.

2. Consensus Node:

The well-formed transaction is passed on to the Consensus node to determine the order and presence of the transaction.

3. Execution Node:

The execution node does all the computation and execution of the transactions. These nodes do not make any decisions on the transactions.

4. Verification Node:

The verification node double-verifies the computation done by the execution node. Any dishonest execution node will be punished by the verification node if any faulty or invalid transaction is being computed.

Flow blockchain transactions per second

Flow has already achieved a massive 1000 transactions per second, making them one of the best in the market. Now they are targeting to achieve 10,000 TPS.

Benefits of Flow Blockchain

Endnote

Now we know what is Flow Blockchain and how it works. In the next blog, we'll see how one can operate in the Flow Blockchain with an illustration to understand it in deep.

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