Produced by: LD Capital Research
Author: Betty, YY
Summary
Summary
The onlineization of offline life and the booming owner economy have created a huge demand for data storage, which has huge business and application prospects;
Centralized storage is difficult to keep up with the changes in storage capacity, data read and write speed, security and data relationship brought about by the exponential growth of data due to factors such as high cost and preset storage format, so decentralized storage came into being born;
Decentralized storage is based on blockchain technology and has the characteristics of strong scalability, security, high efficiency, automatic fault tolerance, high reliability, and lower cost;
In the world of Web 3.0, the massive online footprints and online works created by users have created an unbelievably huge data kingdom, and the maintenance of this data kingdom depends on a reliable, stable and secure data storage network;
In the world of Metaverse Huihong, if the monetized virtual items lose the protection of the trusted blockchain storage, once the corresponding metadata and media data become invalid or tampered with, they will become an unaccepted Party's checks without value;
Introduction
Introduction
In the summer of 2021, a group of strange-looking villains composed of 10,000 irregular pixels suddenly emerged. It is surprising that a single avatar can be traded in Ethereum equivalent to tens of millions of dollars; Bored Ape Yacht Club, Loot, etc. have become the new darlings of the encryption market. From encrypted art and games to avatars and texts, the rise of NFT has ignited people's endless imagination of metaverse and Web 3.0.
However, when we are talking about CryptoPunk as a status symbol, playing and earning game Axie Infinity enthusiastically, and heartily conceiving the journey of stars and seas in the Metaverse, have we ever thought about where these data will be stored? Are you concerned that this data might be tampered with? No one would hope that the avatar that cost tens of millions of dollars would be worthless due to the tampering of the underlying data, and no one would hope that the precious memories of conversations with friends in the Metaverse would disappear forever due to system downtime. Standing at the starting point of the metaverse and the Web 3.0 era, in today's explosive data growth, we urgently need a safe, open, free, and reliable storage network.
secondary title
Storage Industry Ecology
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Global data generation trend chart, source: www.slideshare.net/PerryLea/the-20-rule-how-the-seismic-growth-of-data-has-always-and-will-always-outgrow-telcom
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Global cloud storage industry market size forecast, source https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/cloud-storage-market
The business model of storage is divided into centralized and decentralized storage. Centralized storage is to store data completely on a centralized server, and decentralized storage is to use distributed storage technology to disperse and store data slices in multiple independent on the storage provider. The centralized storage solution meets the needs of enterprise-level storage with high stability and low cost; the decentralized storage meets the needs of the long-tail enterprise market with its customized storage solution, economic incentive model, and strong privacy. Special scene requirements. Standing at the intersection of Web 3.0 and Metaverse, the emphasis on data security and user data ownership, the importance of decentralized storage will become increasingly prominent.
2.1 Centralized storage
Centralized storage, that is, to concentrate the entire storage on multiple sets of devices in one system, is a product of the past era of mainframes. With a limited number of fixed nodes, data access only needs to go through one controller, so it has the advantage of low latency but Relatively high costs, data security, and low operational scalability for service providers.
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2021 Q1 Market Share of Global Cloud Storage Providers (Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-of-leading-cloud-infrastructure-service-providers/)
With the spread of Weibo, Facebook, etc. and the popularity of self-content creation, we have entered an era of exponential data growth. Explosive data growth has put forward higher requirements for storage capacity, expansion speed, and data backup. ; Real-time information interaction between users requires faster data read and write speed and higher security; at the same time, as the types of data generated by users themselves and the relationship between data become more complex and diverse, the storage system needs to change from the previous single The document type is extended to various semi-structured and unstructured data relationships. However, due to its high construction costs and industry entry barriers, the expansion of data storage capacity and data types of centralized storage is difficult to keep up with the pace of data production, and decentralized storage emerges as the times require.
2.2 Decentralized storage
As Hu Feitong, an early evangelist of IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), said: "In the world of centralized data storage, users not only pay for data storage, but also do not get good data protection. This phenomenon must be changed. .Through decentralization, users can manage their own data, encrypted storage, authorized access, secure backup, etc. The realization of features will greatly enhance the privacy of users, and also enhance the long-term storage of data. At the same time, it is expected to share Greatly reduce costs. This is the inevitable direction of data storage development."
Decentralized storage is based on blockchain technology, adopts open source applications and algorithms, disperses and stores data slices on multiple independent network nodes, advocates privacy protection, data redundancy backup, etc., and uploads data to seed nodes or files Parties provide economic incentives to value data. Among them, the economic incentive model enables safe and long-term storage of user data, which is the finishing touch of decentralized storage.
When decentralized storage meets blockchain technology, it has the characteristics of strong scalability, security, high efficiency, automatic fault tolerance, high reliability, and lower cost (Jiao Shike, 2020):
Scalability: The number of storage nodes can be expanded infinitely, and the storage capacity of each node can also be flexibly adjusted;
Security: There is no need to know the partner or seek the trust of a third party. The stored information is divided into fragments and stored in multiple nodes. The encryption of stored data is not limited to users and software terminals, but also in all links of the storage network, in information During the transmission process, encryption processing is performed through methods such as private network access key and zero-knowledge proof;
High efficiency: nodes on the same network can directly share files;
Automatic fault tolerance: Since the storage content has been distributed to many nodes in the network, additional copies can be stored in the event of data transmission or storage errors;
High reliability: The verification mechanism contained in the storage system can ensure that the files are completely and authentically stored, and can be accessed by users at any time 7*24 hours;
secondary title
Decentralized Storage: Where Web 3.0 Meets the Metaverse
3.1 Decentralized storage and Web 3.0
The origin of the Internet can be traced back to the birth of the World Wide Web in 1989. If the portal website opened the era of Web 1.0, then the rise of blogs in 2003 marked the beginning of Web 2.0. From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, from passive information reception to self-created content and online interaction, Internet users call for an application experience that pays more attention to user content creation, ease of use and interoperability, and Web 3.0 is on the horizon. As Tim Berners-Lee puts it, “People keep asking what is Web 3.0. I think maybe when you have a scalable vector graphics overlay on Web 2.0 – everything is rippling, collapsing , seem ambiguous—and when you have access to a semantic web integrated in a vast data space, you have access to an incredible data resource” (Victoria Shannon, 2006). Although we have not yet reached an agreed definition of Web 3.0, Web 3.0 should have the following characteristics (Fabric Venture, 2020):
Openness (Open): Open source software is built by an open and accessible developer community, and operations performed on the chain can be viewed by everyone.
Trustless: The network itself allows participants to interact publicly or privately without a trusted third party. Web 3.0 uses a decentralized incentive mechanism to ensure that participants abide by the rules, and uses the consensus mechanism of the blockchain protocol to verify the authenticity of the account and the validity of the transfer in the transaction, achieving a de-intermediary value transfer.
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Blockweave:
The project adopts a brand new blockchain network Blockweave - based on the consensus mechanism and specific block production mode, which is to make a hash list of the hash values of all previous blocks and make a list of all active wallets in the system. Miners The verification work is completed by retrieving the hash list and wallet list, without the need to verify the entire node like BTC, ETH and other nodes, which reduces energy consumption and improves node work efficiency.
Incentive Algorithm Wildfire:
Unlike Filecoin, which needs to continuously charge storage fees, Arweave only charges a one-time permanent storage fee when data is written, and then users read data for free. In order to encourage nodes to respond to data read requests, Arweave introduces Incentive algorithm widfire. In simple terms, Wildfire is a node scoring system that ranks each node against other nodes based on the number of times they send new transactions and blocks and how quickly they respond to requests. The more reliable data obtained from adjacent nodes, the higher the score for the other party, and the greater the probability of block generation.
Intelligent Network SmartWeave:
Smart Weave transfers the computational burden of smart contract execution from the node to the user, that is, only all the data of the application is stored in the Arweave network, and these data will be provided to the browser or other client applications in the form of code, thus enabling Arweave to Supports Dapps that require a lot of computation.
The Evolution of the Internet (Source: https://hackernoon.com/web-3-0-will-be-powered-by-blockchain-technology-stack-626ce3f828c7)
In the sea of stars of Web 3.0, the boundary between the digital world and the physical world is blurring. If there is no stable and reliable data storage network to silently record the massive online footprints and online works created by users, when we look back at what happened in the Web 3.0 world with great interest, then there may only be The next blurry shard.
3. 2 Decentralized storage and Metaverse
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In-game virtual assets of The Sandbox, data source: The Sandbox
3. 3 Main decentralized storage solutions
3.3.1 Bittorren
The earliest decentralized transmission scheme is Bittorrent, that is, BT download, which was proposed by software engineer Bram Cohen in 2003. It overcomes the limitations of traditional download methods through P2P downloading—it does not require resource publishers to have high-performance servers to It transfers resources, and the more people who download the same file, the faster the download speed of the file. In addition, the charging model of its free use has attracted many netizens to use it. However, Bittorrent downloads must use seed files, that is, all the addresses of the downloaded content can be downloaded in this seed file, and the client can only download the content in the seed file. But torrent files may decrease or even disappear over time, which also means that the stored content may disappear during transmission. Another glaring problem with Bittorrent is the lack of incentives for users to share files for free. In the absence of proper financial incentives, only the popular and downloaded content will survive, and some of the best that goes unnoticed may disappear into history, leaving only a blurred silhouette.
3.3.2 IPFS/ Filecoin
IFPS (InterPlanetary File System) is another decentralized storage solution proposed in 2015, which overcomes the shortcomings of bittorrent - multiple versions of content can be stored, and content can be pre-downloaded, thereby achieving decentralization, fast, high efficiency, Reliable, secure content storage. It is worth noting that IPFS has pioneered the introduction of the incentive layer Filecoin, which ensures the reliable storage of files within the agreed period through the token incentive mechanism.
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Working principle diagram of IPFS, image source: https://www.8btc.com/article/613165
Of course, this model of filecoin does not mean that it is perfect. IPFS mining requires professional equipment—GPU mining machines, which make mining costs high. The increase in industry entry barriers may prevent ordinary individuals from directly participating in storage mining, and the total storage of the entire network will be transferred to a small number of storage suppliers or large-scale mining pools. concentrated. To some extent, the complete decentralization conceived by IPFS has become a "centralized" storage monopolized by a few suppliers during the execution process.
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Filecoin baseline and computing power trend chart, image source: filscan.io/statistics/map
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Filecoin ecological map, image source: https://github.com/filecoin-project/community/discussions/194
3.3.3 Arweave
Unlike Filecoin, which stores data off-chain, another storage solution, Arweave, stores data content directly in the blockchain, which is a decentralized storage solution that focuses on permanent storage + on-chain storage. As shown in the figure below, the Arweave solution is divided into two layers: the underlying block network Blockweave and the upper layer based on HTTP-based Permaweb. The technical highlight of the Arweave project is its underlying Blockweave network:
Arweave Architecture
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Arweave node distribution map, source: https://viewblock.io/arweave/stats
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Arweave transaction volume statistics, source: https://viewblock.io/arweave/stat/txCountHistory
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outlook
outlook
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Comparison of decentralized storage solutions
references
references
Cloud Storage Market (2021), Sneha Korad Rachita Rake , Vineet Kumar, https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/cloud-storage-market
Distributed storage - the blue ocean battle in the 100 billion storage market, https://www.8btc.com/article/613165
The information in this research report comes from publicly disclosed information, and the opinions in this article are for research purposes only and do not represent any investment opinions. The opinions and forecasts issued in the report are only the analysis and judgment of the date of issuance, and do not have permanent validity. In addition, in any case, the organization and the author shall not be liable for any loss caused by anyone using any content in this report.
A 'more revolutionary' Web(2006), Victoria Shannon，https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/technology/23iht-web.html
What Is Web 3.0 & Why It Matters （2020）， Fabric Venture，https://medium.com/fabric-ventures/what-is-web-3-0-why-it-matters-934eb07f3d2b
IPFS and Friends: A Qualitative Comparison of Next Generation Peer-to-Peer Data Networks (2021), Erik Daniel and Florian Tshorsch
disclaimer
The information in this research report comes from publicly disclosed information, and the opinions in this article are for research purposes only and do not represent any investment opinions. The opinions and forecasts issued in the report are only the analysis and judgment of the date of issuance, and do not have permanent validity. In addition, in any case, the organization and the author shall not be liable for any loss caused by anyone using any content in this report.
