Akash Network CEO Greg Osuri joins Yahoo Finance to discuss decentralized cloud computing as former President Donald Trump launches his own social media network.
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ZACK GUZMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. As you all know, we have been closely monitoring the actions in the Trump-affiliated SPAC DWAC (Digital World Acquisition Corp.). Digital World Acquisition Corp. plans to merge with former President Trump's social media efforts and, of course, the digital division. On that investor platform, President Trump offered some different perspectives on the deplatforming of social media.
Of course, we saw some issues with Parler earlier this year when we talked about Amazon stopping hosting that social media app as well as the App Store, and when you look at Apple, restricting access to that app as well. So there are a lot of questions about what it would be like to deplatform some of these social media companies while hosting them.
But some of these problems may be solved by new efforts in cryptocurrency, especially Web 3.0. When it comes to decentralized cloud computing, Akash Network is striving to compete with Amazon Web Services in this area.
For more on this push, it is a pleasure to welcome the CEO of Akash Network here with us today. Greg Osuri joins our show. Greg, I mean, when we see it, explain to our audience because a lot of people probably don't know how the internet works or how some of these sites used to be deplatformed, pulled from AWS . So how does Akash address some of these issues, I think, by trying to stop the fight against free speech?
GREG OSURI: Yeah, just a little, you know, a short history lesson. The internet was created as a decentralized network to counter the threat of centralized, yes, central entities going down and affecting the communication network. But over time, it has become more and more centralized, and now it seems that about 80% of cloud computing, which is the backbone of the Internet, is controlled by four companies, right? Amazon is the biggest.
And the results are obvious. You know, the concentration of so much power in a single entity provides a way for people to act the way they want. The result is censorship. As a result, we see more and more deplatforming becoming a threat to our civil liberties. In the latest example, Parler was the victim. What matters is not which side of politics you are on, but the fact that there is one corporation or single individual or entity that wields so much power over civil liberties is what is worrisome.
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, yeah, I don't want to get involved in politics. I mean, it's the reality as we see it. But when you look at where companies might move, I think there might be security issues with using Akash instead of AWS, and you'll have to pay extra. But it sounds like you're basically using servers that are down, or, I'm guessing, available capacity here for companies to turn to on a peer-to-peer basis. Talk to me about how it works.
GREG OSURI: Yeah, so Akash works like a traditional cloud. The only difference is computing - Akash sources don't belong to a single company or individual, but come from a distributed network of cloud computing data centers spread all over the world. So companies like Equinix, which is the largest network of data centers in the world that actually provides computing for Amazon, is a big supplier to Akash.
Thus, on Akash, as a permissionless, self-sovereign, and censorship-resistant open marketplace, there is open access to previously inaccessible computing power, the raw computing power that powers the cloud today. And security, it's probably more secure than traditional Amazon because Akash is open source software and all of our source code is actually open for public audit. As such, it offers a similar (if not better) level of security assurance to that provided by Amazon's large cloud.
The growth has been phenomenal. We launched the platform about six months ago. We have about 500 applications active so far, active applications, and more than 30,000 deployments have occurred in the past six months. We just see the numbers go up. Until last month, we actually doubled in terms of workload applications live on Akash Network. And, you know, it's pretty amazing to see so much adoption at such an early stage.
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, some might say that the growth of Amazon's competitors in the web3 decentralized cloud here is similar to Amazon. But when we're talking about some of these risks, right, everybody can talk about free speech here, I think, you know, some of the resistance from the community might be there's no underlying way, I guess, once this gets hosted to, sort of, Unhost it.
What do you think? Because I guess, there might be you talking about hate speech and what might have happened in the past on Parler and some other platforms. And Facebook and Twitter, everyone else is dealing with this too. But if there is no way to regulate it, what might this entail in terms of future possibilities?
GREG OSURI: So I'm a big believer in free speech, no matter how harsh or fluent it is, right? If we suppress voices, we are not addressing the core issues. But then again, platforms need to self-regulate, okay? It really comes down to the type of users they serve. So, hate speech or speech is a series of things. Like, you know, one of the big questions I get asked is what happens if something really bad happens on the Akash network and it can't be removed? Yes, it can happen.
But the way Akash Network works is self-regulating. This means that providers on the Akash Network choose who they want to serve. So if something like Parler, you know, half the country is for it and half the country is against it, but as long as there's one vendor that's willing to serve Parler, Akash -- you know, Parler can run on Akash, right? But , if there are no providers willing to provide services like child pornography or something really bad, when no one is willing to actually provide services, the site will not be serving on the Akash platform.
So it really comes down to a self-regulating community of who serves and who doesn't. So, I'm a firm believer that people will act in good faith and will serve what they believe is right. Of course, I mean, the nature of spreading hate speech, I think unless you don't expose the people who are doing these things, and there's no way of knowing who's behind those things, right? I'd rather be transparent than opaque.
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, I mean, transparency, everything else that we've seen in Web 3.0 has progressed, and it's very interesting to see Akash build here to embrace AWS. You've got to let us know about the growth there. Greg Osuri, CEO of Akash Network, thank you for being here to chat with us.
Original link: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/open-source-cloud-computing-akash-183000826.html
