Intro to Relic Protocol
What is Relic Protocol?
Relic Protocol is the first trustless and provably secure source of historical data on-chain. Relic Protocol enables dApps on L1 and L2s to access all of Ethereum’s historical data with maximal security and minimal gas costs.
Motivation
The Ethereum blockchain contains over 19 million blocks, in which over 2.5 billion transactions have occurred, and over 300 million accounts have been created. Altogether, Ethereum’s history consists of tens of terabytes of data. This rich set of data can be accessed by any archive node or block explorer but is currently inaccessible to smart contracts running on chain. Relic Protocol is designed to overcome this limitation of the EVM. Using new cryptographic tools such as zk-SNARKs, Relic Protocol gives smart contracts access to all of Ethereum’s historical data, enabling entirely new types of applications to be built.
Features
- Trustless. Through the use of zk-SNARKs and Merkle-Patricia Trie proofs, the Relic Protocol enables cryptographic verification of data uploaded to the chain. As a result, dApps utilizing the Relic Protocol can access historical data without trusting any third-party intermediary.
- Decentralized. Relic Protocol's smart contracts are immutable and permissionless. Anyone can generate a proof and submit it to the Relic Protocol for verification.
- Scalable. Relic Protocol’s on-chain state verification is heavily optimized, resulting in minimal gas usage for apps built on Relic Protocol. Developers can easily build efficient history-powered dApps using Relic Protocol’s Solidity and Typescript SDKs.