Future-Proof Blockchain | Substrate_ (2024)

With any structure, the foundation is often the most difficult part to modify, and thus upgrade. For this reason, Substrate's base has intentionally been built on an extremely simple and unchanging foundation using the widely-accepted open protocol WebAssembly.

Changes occur a layer up from the foundation which not only gives developers a non-opinionated design to work with, it also removes legacy design decisions that would otherwise become outdated and baked into the foundation.

As a core design principle, composability enables developers to build a blockchain comprised of components specific to their needs on a battle-tested framework. Developers are free to choose from a long list of pallets or create their own to add the specific functionality they need. A developer may choose to have a pallet that enables smart contracts, or specifically not include pallets to keep their blockchain network lean and reduce attack vectors.

For example, a developer may want to enable users to gain access to accounts even if they lose their private keys or other authentication mechanism. In this case, the developer would simply include the Recovery pallet, which enables users to recover an account using trusted friends. Developers don't need to build new functionality on top; it's already available and deployed into the runtime itself.

An ever-growing number of pallets are available, created by both Parity Technologies and the community. These can be combined in many combinations to fit the needs of the desired use case. From the Oracle pallet to the Zero-Knowledge Verifier pallet and the Governance pallet, there are numerous existing pallets that can be integrated from the start or added later with forkless runtime upgrades.

Consider a scenario where a small innovation is made with key recovery; a new recovery pallet could be created and deployed in a forkless upgrade automatically. Even with a more drastic innovation such as the advent of large-scale quantum computing, algorithms can be swapped out for quantum resistant ones.