If you check the Seele website the first introduction you get is the following:
Seele is powered by an up-scalable Neural Consensus protocol for high throughput concurrency among large scale heterogeneous nodes and is able to form a unique heterogeneous forest multi-chain ecosystem
That is a long list of big keywords. To see what is behind all those fancy words I took a deep-dive into their whitepaper. Since this project has generated an insane amount of hype in the last weeks after Ian Balina reviewed it I think it might be worth it.
This is the first of two parts and focuses on the technical aspects of Seele and its fundamental idea. I will examine the potential use cases and examples in the second part.
If you want a one-line TL;DR just scroll right to the bottom.
The Soul of Seele
Seele wants to advance the blockchain space in the following areas:
•Communication protocols
• Network infrastructure
• Cross-chain communication
• Consensus algorithms
• Application ecosystem
This means the team is not just talking about a better blockchain, but rather wants to build an overall better blockchain ecosystem. If it hasn’t dawned on you yet — this is big!
They are building the blockchain internet!
Let’s take a quick excursion here and go over why I think Seele could be such a big deal.
The Internet as We Know It
The Internet as you know it works with multiple protocols on different layers. On the networking layer the most important protocol is the Internet Protocol (IP). Every server online has an IP address to reach it. The Domain Name System (DNS) maps IP addresses to humanly readable names, such as seele.pro.
The transport layer is dominated by two protocols: TCP and UDP. TCP is the responsible, grown up brother who always makes sure the recipient received all the data. UDP does not care at all. Once the data is sent, for UDP the job is done. You experience that when your Netflix stream goes bad — a few packages are lost on the way, but there’s no point in resending them because Mr. Robot is already on to his next morphine trip. That’s UDP.
On top of these layers is where applications are built. So from an OSI standpoint blockchains are simply applications using UDP and IP to send their data around.
The ones making big money with the Internet are not its creators. Most of the value is either captured by resource monopolies like your ISP and on the other hand service providers like facebook. Smaller fish and users are at the mercy of bigger players and value created by the network and community effects is absorbed by the few.
The Blockchain Internet
Seele’s idea is to turn this all around. Should their vision succeed, Seele’s protocols become the backbone of a new Internet — a Value Internet in their words, powered by a new generation of blockchain.
Cross-Chain Communication
The goal is the Value Internet and their solution is a Forest Blockchain Structure. In simple terms this is a meta-blockchain as a layer above all other blockchains, building a forest. Each tree is its own blockchain but they are linked through the meta chain.
Much like a fungus that spreads through the soil and make every tree part of one big, living organism. If you can’t see where this is going, you will find many innovative and important use cases in my follow-up article. The forest is rather similar to Plasma sidechains, except that every sub chain can be its completely own blockchain — hence the heterogenous in the name.
With their new protocols and their heterogeneous forest architecture they plan on establishing a simple and efficient way to communicate and share value across the various blockchains.
Communication Protocols
Seele aims to invent new protocols to connect blockchain to the internet and foster communication between different blockchains. These protocols are designed from the get-go to be more suitable for blockchains in comparison to existing protocols.
What I called fungus above, Seele calls Value Transport Protocol. Instead of IPs and DNS the meta chain handles registration and location of resources within the forest (network of blockchains).
On a lower level blockchains don’t have to rely on UDP or TCP anymore and instead can use the Quick Value Internet Connection protocol (QVIC). QVIC is optimized for blockchains, so that for example the package size is not arbitrary but instead matches the block size of a given chain.
While this already sounds interesting, we have one big, stinky elephant in the room: The Internet as we know it will not just disappear and will go on to have its own use cases of course. To solve this Seele proposes another protocol: VHTTP. This protocol allows upper-level applications to interact with blockchains. VHTTP seamlessly integrates with HTTP, creating a gateway to the old world. Boom, solved!
Network Infrastructure
Seele’s new network infrastructure is built from the ground up for scalability and enhanced security. They plan to have efficient resource consumption via isolating them. Since their protocols are based on established protocols there should not be a problem for low-level network hardware.
We will have to wait for the Seele team for details to find out how exactly they want to innovate in this area. In their whitepaper they reference test clusters of 1.000 nodes already which shows they are ready to not just talk the talk but also walk the walk.
Consensus Algorithms
Seele claims to have an evolution of the byzantine agreement, making it more robust without sacrificing performance.
This new algorithm works asynchronously, so it can be heavily parallelized as nodes don’t have to agree on each block right away. Instead of finding consensus after each block there is a sliding window where consensus is established gradually over time.
The Seele meta chain does neither rely on proof of work, nor on proof of stake. Instead block builders will be randomly selected. This also makes a sibyl attack harder to execute as well as nodes easier to operate.
Application Ecosystem
If the above points can be achieved, this should result in many new ways of how the blockchain ecosystem can evolve and thrive. Seele aims to build bridges between blockchains as well as the “old world”.
Token mechanics
While I have not found many details about their token mechanics in the whitepaper, this much is known: The token is a reward for nodes and serves as a governance feature. This means the protocol is upgradable without hard forks.
Like other tokenized projects value can be captured by every token owner and network participants, a big incentive for anyone to transition their businesses from the old internet into a new Value Internet.
Here is the TL;DR:
Seele wants to build new protocols optimized for a blockchain internet, connected to the outside world and wrapped in a meta-blockchain.
I hope this sheds some light on the Seele project and helps you understand what they are trying to do. In a follow-up article I will examine a few use cases of the forest network, so simply follow me to stay up to date with this project.