background
Only by having a clearer understanding of Polkadots ecological development, as an investor, participant or developer, can we better grasp the dividends of Polkadots ecological development. (This article will inevitably involve projects, and it is only used as an expression of opinions in the article, not as any other suggestions.)
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backgroundIn September 2014, Microsoft officially announced that it would take a 3D sandbox construction game Minecraft (Chinese name My World) and its development company Mojang under its account. The acquisition transaction amount reached 2.5 billion US dollars. The game industry at that time was a veritable big deal.Those who are familiar with the game Minecraft will probably know that as a fun clearance game that can upgrade monster-fighting games in the virtual world, the degree of freedom of the game can be said to have reached the pinnacle, and you can even create your own home in the game. There are also some players who have built another city together in the game. Therefore, in addition to common props, the game can also own fixed assets such as real land and real estate, which is why the game is so popular.
Looking back at the development of the Internet and 5G in the past, we have seen
The digital world is getting closer and closer to us, and the progress of the digital world allows us to start living in the real version of My World.
, and in these digital worlds, we also own our own property, commodities, or some treasures, just like Tao obtained in games.It is precisely because of the trend of the digital world in the future that Microsoft is willing to spend a lot of money to acquire Minecraft and combine it with another Microsoft AR product HoloLens (a mixed reality head-mounted display developed by Microsoft). Let us intuitively feel the digital world seems more within reach.In this paper, we will focus on analyzing
, starting from the common decentralized storage, discussing the decentralized storage built in the Polkadot ecosystem, and seeing how decentralized storage is implemented in the Polkadot track.
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What is decentralized storage?secondary title
1. Definition of decentralized storage
Decentralized storage means that in a storage network, there is no centralized organization as the endorsement of the storage system, but relatively independent individuals or some groups contribute their own storage space as the constituent units of the storage network, thus bypassing the central Absolute control over data brought by institutional storage.
The concept of distributed storage has existed for a longer time. In a broader sense, a distributed storage system is to disperse and store data on multiple independent devices. Distributed storage means that the architecture is distributed, while decentralized storage means that the stored content is not controlled by a central organization or individual. Therefore, decentralized storage must be distributed storage, but distributed storage is not necessarily decentralized storage. Our common cloud disk is a type of distributed storage, but behind it is controlled by a centralized organization, which can delete and modify the data we store in it at any time, which is very different from decentralized storage.
Therefore, decentralized storage is considered to be a more extensive and practical storage method in the future storage field, which can not only enhance the security of stored data, but also reduce storage costs.
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2. What is the difference between decentralized storage and capacity storage projects?Of course, when it comes to decentralized storage, we have to mention another thing that is easily misunderstood, that is, the so-called decentralized storage projects like Chia that have become popular recently, but in essence, what Chia provides is not the real Decentralized storage is just a capacity proof similar to Bitcoin.Back to the real decentralized storage, it should be
The contribution value to the network is measured by the service quality of the storage space (Storage), so that it can be regarded as a decentralized storage facility in the true sense, and many excellent decentralized storage spaces can be born around the decentralized storage space. application
, and the IPFS protocol mentioned below is more in line with the development trend of decentralized storage at the current stage.secondary title3. An important protocol in decentralized storage - IPFS
In the same year that Minecraft was acquired, an organization called Protocol Labs (Protocol Lab) joined the top American incubator Y-Combinator, and then the protocol lab released to the world in January 2015
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), which is a globally oriented, point-to-point distributed version file system, is also known as the InterPlanetary File System
, Through this system, point-to-point transmission of data and decentralization of storage can be realized.
On the other hand, the goal of IPFS is to supplement or even replace the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that currently dominates the Internet, in order to achieve safer, more stable and faster network transmission.
To successfully build a decentralized storage network, it is not enough to have a protocol like IPFS, because why should others be willing to provide storage space on IPFS?Of course, it does not mean that the incentive layer of IPFS can only be Filecoin made by Protocol Labs, because IPFS is an open protocol, and other teams can also build another incentive layer based on IPFS. After all, there is no single correct answer on the road of technology research and development. .
Similarly, the idea of IPFS+incentive layer is not the only solution. We have also seen some other projects build their own protocols and integrate the token reward mechanism of the blockchain to build another The Idea of Centralized Network
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What is decentralized storage?
So, what are the advantages of decentralized storage compared to our current storage network, and why is it getting more and more recognition? We will mainly take IPFS technology as an example to discuss the significance of decentralized storage.
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1. It has more advantages than centralized storage1.1. Content storage is decentralized to avoid the risk of centralization factors
Now when we open the websites we frequently browsed more than ten years ago, we will find that many of them can no longer be opened, showing 404 not found, which tells us that this page no longer exists. The reason is that we The content of the website you see now is all stored in a centralized server. When the operator of the website no longer pays the cost of the server, this part of the content will be deleted by the server manager, and all the information on the website will be forever. Disappeared.
The risk of centralization will no longer occur if the content is deleted by the management of the centralized storage, or the content stored in the cloud is deleted by the network disk.
IPFS allows content to be stored in different storage spaces in a decentralized and distributed manner, and no one subject can modify or delete the stored content.
1.2. Stored content can obtain privacy protection
Because the stored files will be split into many parts, and then encrypted and stored in different nodes. Therefore, the storage party does not know what the stored content is, which can effectively protect our privacy, and there will be no leakage of the 50 million user data of Facebook before.
1.3. More effective backup can prevent single point of failure
Since the stored content is distributed to different places, data loss due to single point of failure can be effectively prevented through data redundancy. Although traditional cloud storage can also choose to back up multiple times, no matter how many backups there are, it is still controlled by the company of the cloud storage, and its security cannot be significantly increased with the increase in the number of backups.
1.4. Greatly save existing storage space
IPFS has the function of deduplication. When IPFS stores files, it will back up three copies in the whole network by default (you can also choose to back up more), and then the same files will not be stored in the network again. Compared with our current storage situation, for example, the movie Avatar was downloaded 16.58 million times a year in 2016, and the total number of downloads is even more amazing. There is a lot of space occupied by the same movie, and IPFS The decentralized storage can greatly reduce the occupation of storage space and improve the utilization rate of storage space.
Compared with centralized storage, which will occupy a large amount of bandwidth, decentralized storage can theoretically reduce bandwidth consumption by more than half and reduce network costs. Moreover, decentralized storage can also greatly reduce costs at the level of construction and operation and maintenance.
1.6, faster
Since the network can first select the node service that is closer to the user, and naturally supports technologies such as P2P acceleration, the speed of reading data is faster than traditional storage.
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2. Important infrastructure of Web3.0
Web3.0 defined by Gavin will be an extensible series of technical frameworks, and build applications in a new way. Through this new application, he hopes that everyone can control their own (digital) identity, assets And data, and then control your own destiny.The content stored in the current blockchain is very limited and cannot decentralize all data. Moreover, at the moment when the blockchain storage is very limited, its own ledger is becoming larger and larger, and the blockchain technology itself achieves tamper-proof by storing the same ledger in all nodes, so the more nodes If there are more, the storage space of a single ledger is also increasing, which will consume a large amount of storage resources just to store the ledger of the blockchain.
on the other hand,Therefore, blockchain + decentralized storage has become an important solution. On the one hand, blockchain projects can no longer be troubled by the growing ledger,Putting the ledger of the blockchain on a decentralized storage network such as IPFS can greatly reduce the ledger storage space of a single blockchain project, making it easier and easier to become a full node, and more conducive to blockchain projects Further decentralization.
Larger files, such as pictures, videos, etc., can also be decentralized
so,With the development of technology, especially the improvement of display technologies such as VR/AR, we may even see scenes similar to Ready Player One in the future: everyone can enter a virtual digital world through smart devices such as VR/AR. The world, in this digital world, everyone has their own house, digital currency, digital assets, etc. We can regard the storage space as the land of the digital world, and various applications built on the digital world are various types of buildings on the land. Among them, the attribute of decentralization is the most important, because you dont want your house in the digital world to be peeped by others at any time, or taken back by a certain center at any time.
so,
Decentralized storage is the cornerstone of this digital world and an important infrastructure for Web3.0.
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3. Important infrastructure in the era of data explosion led by 5G
According to IDCs prediction, the size of the global data circle will increase from 33ZB in 2018 to 175ZB in 2025, and unstructured data such as text, pictures, and videos will have a higher growth rate, and its proportion in the overall data circle will also continue Increase.
However, the existing centralized storage method always has a bottleneck. As we mentioned before, it does not have the function of deduplication. A file may be stored in hundreds or thousands on the network, causing a lot of waste. Although technology giants such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Tencent have announced that they will spend huge sums of money to build numerous data centers in the next few years, the expansion speed of the data explosion is likely to exceed the speed of data center construction. More importantly, traditional centers The modernized storage method determines that it will still waste a lot of space on storing the same content, so it is difficult to adapt to the development of the times without fundamentally changing the storage method.
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1、Filecoin
Development of decentralized storage projects
Decentralized storage is an important scenario for blockchain applications, and many high-quality projects have emerged. We take Filecoin, Storj, and ARweave as examples to briefly explain the current development of decentralized storage projects.
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Filecoin is the team behind IPFS - the incentive layer blockchain of IPFS made by Protocol Labs. IPFS itself can be used normally as a protocol, but if there is no incentive, why would others be willing to provide storage space to IPFS? ? So Filecoin assumed the role of incentive.
In Filecoin, miners are important participants in the network. Different from common mining in the past, what they provide is not computing power, but storage capacity. To be precise, participants are judged on the basis of the effective storage space provided. Contribution value to the entire network, and block rewards are obtained according to the proportion of the contribution.
2.Storj
At present, Filecoin already has sufficient storage supply, has reached the basic goal of storage computing power exceeding the network baseline, and has started a new chapter of its encrypted economic incentive mechanism moving towards the medium-term vision of the second stage. Its incentive goal has shifted from extensive capacity building to building capacity that matches supply and demand and is comprehensive and sustainable. In the future, Filecoin will move towards a more efficient direction.At the same time, many excellent projects have joined the Filecoin Eco-Showcase plan. It covers databases, DeFi, middleware, trading platforms, cloud teaching, medical care and other fields, and has reached cooperation with Wolfram Blockchain Labs, Chainlink, etc.secondary titleStorj Labs provides end-to-end encryption and affordable distributed cloud storage, and is a decentralized blockchain-based distributed cloud storage system.
Its underlying foundation is built on Ethereum
. Storj utilizes spare disk drive space shared by members of its community to create a secure network for developers, operations teams, companies and others who need secure cloud storage. That
The Storj network consists of three main components: storage nodes, satellites, and uplinks. The role of storage nodes is to store and return data. Uplink is a software or service that can input data into or get data directly from the network. Satellites act as an intermediary between uplinks and storage nodes, facilitating storage interactions and deciding which storage nodes will store which files.
3.ARweave
The relationship between satellites and storage nodes is very important. Satellites are responsible for paying storage nodes for storage and bandwidth used by the network. Storage nodes want to store as much data as possible for the network so it can make the most money, and to do this, they rely heavily on the help of satellites. The two are equivalent to the complementary roles of the producer and the channel.Currently Storj already has 20,000 tenants, 18,000 miners and 8PB of storage space available for use. It can accept BTC, ETH and Storj tokens for payment, and has reached cooperation with multiple projects such as ETC Labs and zkSync. Its commercial cloud storage platform Tardigrade has been put into use and is providing decentralized data storage services for enterprise users.
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Arweave is another kind of IPFS incentive layer. Its goal is to provide permanent storage data based on blockchain technology, which is a permanent serverless network.
The equipment requirements for Arweave mining are similar to those of home computers, and only 4 cores, 8GRAM and 512G hard drives are required to participate. Miners get incentives by storing data as nodes. The more blocks they save, the more likely they are to get block rewards, and the more block rewards they get.
The current data stored in the Arweave network has reached 7.85TB, and there are 151 nodes around the world, with an average daily transaction volume of 26,110. The data used in a single day has reached a historical high of 888GB, and it is increasingly favored by individual users.
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Decentralized Storage on Polkadot
With the idea of the mainstream decentralized storage project, what is the situation of the decentralized storage project in the Polkadot ecosystem?
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1. Filecoin transfer bridge
Filecoin can actually be regarded as one of the Polkadot ecosystems, and Filecoin has always had some connections with Polkadot.Juan, the founder of Filecoin, has always been a loyal believer in Web3.0, and the decentralized storage made by Filecoin and IPFS happens to be an important part of Web3.0. When the Web3 Foundation behind Polkadot held the Web3 Summit, Juan, as a Web3.0 evangelist, naturally became a frequent visitor to the Web3 Summit. He could be seen sharing his views on Web3.0 at the conference in 2018 and 2019. opinion. (If it werent for the impact of the epidemic in 2020, we might have seen him attend the meeting again)
The contribution of decentralized storage Filecoin+IPFS in Web3.0 has also been recognized by Polkadot founder Gavin. In December 2019, when Polkadot founder Gavin Wood was in an AMA event on Twitter, he was asked: What are the current storage methods for Substrate? I know there is Substrate LFS and Substrate core concept storage. How is the roadmap planned?
Gavin stated: We are working on an initial storage solution as a parachain. Whatever we do, its likely to be integrated into IPFS.
Therefore, it is well-founded to regard Filecoin and the IPFS behind it as part of the Polkadot ecosystem. Judging from Gavins statement, in the future, Filecoin is likely to obtain a public interest parachain as an officially supported Filecoin transfer bridge.
2.Crust
Of course, the Polkadot ecology does not limit a public chain to only one transfer bridge. Taking Ethereum as an example, in addition to the Ethereum transfer bridge made by the officially supported SnowFork, others such as Plasm and Darwinia are also making Ethereum transfer bridges. In the same way, Filecoin is an important ecology, and there are many other Polkadot ecological projects that want to bridge Filecoin to the past and link to the Polkadot ecology by themselves.
In March 2020, Polkadots ecological project ChainX revealed that it is developing the Filecoin bridge. ChainX, as an asset cross-chain gateway, aims to connect any valuable assets to the blockchain network, thereby building a network of interconnected chains and free transfer of value. Web3.0 ecology. And Filecoin may become the infrastructure of all blockchain projects. With the help of IPFS technology and Filecoin network, storage problems can be solved, which is why ChainX is connected to Filecoin.secondary title
Crust is an incentive layer protocol for decentralized storage, including a variety of storage layer protocols including IPFS, and provides support for the application layer. At the same time, Crusts architecture is also capable of supporting the decentralized computing layer, building a distributed ecosystem that values data privacy and ownership.
Crust is not a separate public chain, but a parallel chain of Polkadot. Based on the development of the Substrate framework, the consensus algorithm, off-chain working machine, and upgrade mechanism are all consistent with the Polkadot ecosystem, so the maturity of the Crust chain is higher than that of Filecoin.
Since the Crust core proof mechanism is realized through TEE-based local storage verification, it does not require a large amount of computing power, which reduces the requirements for mining machine configuration. . There are many home office-level processors that can be used for mining, and the threshold for mining is lower.
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Summary and reflection on the current status of decentralized storage
Looking at the current mainstream decentralized storage projects, we are very optimistic about the prospects of this ecological niche, but there are still some situations worthy of our consideration.
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1. think
1.1. Commercial application scenarios have not yet been verified on a large scale
Although individual projects are exploring commercialization, they are still far away from large-scale commercialization, and well-known decentralized storage projects like Filecoin are still in the mining stage. Therefore,
How decentralized storage is accepted by tradition is a question worth exploring.
Which project can overcome this difficulty, just like after Coinbase is listed, it can directly obtain the massive market in the traditional field.
1.2. Doubtful economic model
Like the storage market and retrieval market that Filecoin intends to build, where its token FIL is used as the payment medium, there will be a problem here. The demand for circulation and the rise and fall of currency prices are mutually restraining. If A is a storage provider and B is a purchaser of storage services, when B pays a certain amount of FIL to A, if the token rises, A will make a profit, but it will be a loss for B, so he is not so willing to go Conversely, if the token falls, B will make money, but for A, the money received will be less, and he is less willing to collect money. Therefore, the fluctuation of token will inhibit the progress of trade, which is not conducive to the activeness of FILs storage market and retrieval market.
So is there any way? Yes, if FIL is used to mint a stablecoin to form a dual-currency system of stablecoin + FIL, the stablecoin is used for the storage market and the retrieval market, and FIL serves as the development dividend for the entire Filecoin, which can kill two birds with one stone. Seeing that Filecoin has such a design requires further observation.
Since decentralized storage has its own privacy function, it is very helpful to protect our personal privacy, but on the other hand, if the stored content is illegal, wouldn’t decentralized storage become a hotbed for some criminals?
At present, my country is still in the stage of tacitly approving the development of decentralized storage, mainly because Filecoin is still in the stage of pure mining and has not yet reached the stage of commercial application, so it is uncertain that after Filecoin can actually store content, my country Whether the policy will strengthen supervision.
Another thing to note is that currently the country is beginning to suppress PoW-type mining behaviors. In order to meet the goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, although it has not clearly stated that it will crack down on storage-type mining, certain cities such as Beijing are also Strictly crack down on storage mining, in the future, the policy risk will be a sword of Damocles for domestic decentralized storage mining. Overseas, there are also views on the social hidden dangers brought about by illegal data on decentralized storage. Therefore, how to find a balance between supervision and privacy, centralization and decentralization is a major problem of decentralized storage. problem.
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2. Revelation
2.1. IPFS is becoming a trend
The network effect of IPFS is gradually taking shape, as if many emerging public chains are now compatible with Ethereum’s virtual machine EVM, and many decentralized storage projects are also compatible with IPFS, because currently IPFS has some advantages in decentralized storage. The biggest consensus has the most developers and applications. Compatibility with IPFS can reduce the trouble of reinventing the wheel in development, and can also directly link to many development tools and developers, which is very conducive to the development of the ecology.
Not only blockchain projects, but even traditional Internet giants are deploying IPFS one after another. As early as 2019, Azure Marketplace under Microsoft released the IPFS (beta) product, which can create a permission network of IPFS nodes to form a go-to Centralized storage network. In addition, the worlds number one video platform Netflix (Netflix), Google, Huawei Cloud, JD.com, Firefox, Opera browser, and Brave browser have also indicated that they have done IPFS-related deployments.
From this point of view, it seems that IPFS is really moving in the direction of replacing the HTTP protocol, and laying out IPFS in advance will be a major idea to grasp the dividend of decentralized storage.
2.2. There are still many opportunities in this track
From the perspective of the storage mechanism, decentralized storage can greatly reduce the waste of storage space. From this point of view alone, this track is an indispensable transformation of the storage method. In addition to Filecoin, we also see There are many novel ideas. For example, ARweave and Crust have made another incentive layer based on IPFS. Therefore, we have every reason to believe that more incentive layer ideas will be launched. Whats more, it can also be positioned as a subdivision of storage according to the design idea of the incentive layer. For example, ARweave is more inclined to permanently store some valuable information (or NFT). Or, similar to Storj made into a commercial application.
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It is undeniable that we are standing at the entrance of the era leading to Web3.0. In such a big era, data storage as the most important track will inevitably attract the attention of many people. Of course, we can be both participants of the times and builders of the ecology, so that we can enjoy the dividends brought by the development of Web3 together.
Special thanks: Thanks to PolkaWorld, the first Chinese community of Polkadot, and blockchain knight, a well-known blockchain media, for their support of this article.
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