Author: Evan Lu, Waterdrip Capital

How far are we from mass adoption

A week since Trump won the US election, although BTC has risen by more than 20%, Meme coin launches have once again ushered in madness; but during the trough of the past half year, the market seems to have been popular with a "crypto industry" "Lack of implementation support" was the argument. At that time, industries such as Depin were still under construction, and some of its sub-fields, cloud computing, were still far away from true large-scale adoption. However, amid the speculative craze of Meme, CZ and Vitalik personally came out to call for orders, making the DeSci concept unexpectedly popular again. It is undeniable that every new concept cannot escape the stage of speculation and hype when it is born; DeSci is naturally not immune. However, the blockchain industry that started with Bitcoin has developed for so many years, and it is time to consider how to build applications that benefit mankind.

AI & Desci

At the beginning of last year, the AI ​​revolution led by ChatGPT injected new narrative power into this bull market. "AI represents advanced productivity, and blockchain represents advanced redistribution and integration of production relations." This new paradigm consensus quickly aroused heated discussions in the community and became one of the new narratives on the eve of the bull market. Driven by this trend, projects like Bittensor and fetch.ai quickly emerged as leaders in the concept.

Not only that, in September this year, as the encryption market gradually regained its vitality, meme coins surrounding the AI ​​concept also ushered in a wave of launch boom due to $Goat. A small team or even an individual only needs to develop an AI Agent with a specific function - whether it is AI currency speculation or AI virtual companionship, and then accompany it to cultivate its own community and fan base - it only takes 1 week to do it well; finally "Earn profits" by launching meme coins of the same name.

The DeSci concept can even be traced back to the last bull market, but it is limited by the fact that the "Science" cycle in Crypto+Science is too long and has never been used in the encryption industry. What a sense of presence. The real breakout began on November 8, when Binance labs announced its investment in BIO Protocol. This is Binance labs’ first foray into the field of decentralized science (DeSci). Less than a week after this news was announced, CZ attended Binance’s DeSci Day event in Bangkok and discussed with VitalikRegarding Desci insights, CZ even expressed his hope to see 1,000 DeSci projects next year. Afterwards, DeSci was mentioned many times in both Binance official tweets and CZ posts. CZ and Vitalik’s love for singles caused the Desci concept meme currency to become popular; in just a few days, Desci concept MEM coins became popular in many currencies, such as $uro and $ that corresponded to a single drug released by BIO. rif, etc., as well as $SciHub, which is used to donate to Sci-Hub, the world's largest open source paper platform, etc., the total market value of its related concepts has exceeded 800 million US dollars.

But good storytelling is not only reflected in short-term popularity, but also requires long-term infrastructure construction to realize real application scenarios. As for the most essential basic support of AI - computing power resources, the scheduling of idle computing power through Depin cloud computing is still in the development stage, with few large-scale adoption, and the cost, computing environment stability and corresponding speed have still not gained effective market verify.

The core technology behind DeSci - decentralized storage, has been proven since the development of the IPFS protocol that it is cheaper than traditional centralized storage solutions. The security is higher; and the current solution is relatively mature. It can be said that DeSci's infrastructure has been built, and now it just needs more people to recognize and adopt the concept of decentralized storage.

Looking back at the DeSci concept, is it still more speculative than practical?

I remember that at the Hong Kong web3 carnival in April this year, I talked to several project developers who were working silently on the DeSci track, but they all told me without exception, This is a project that requires mental preparation for "long-termism." The current stage can only show that DeSci has just been introduced into the user's field of vision, and the glorious Rome has just reached the stage of completing the plan.

So what is DeSci? DeSci stands for Decentralized Science. It promotes global open access to scientific research data through distributed storage technology, reduces the single control of data by institutions or institutions, and avoids the possibility of leakage, loss, and malicious tampering of centralized storage. This model not only makes scientific research activities open and transparent, but also allows researchers around the world to freely share resources. In addition, DeSci uses smart contracts and DAO to improve the transparency and efficiency of scientific research funding and help scientists raise funds for research. This has fundamentally changed the traditional source structure of scientific research funds and greatly improved the efficiency of fund utilization.

In summary, the DeSci model has achieved innovation in two areas: 1. Fund-raising is achieved by issuing tokens, and the currently popular $rif and $uro are both achieved by issuing meme coins. Raise funds for the development of a drug. 2. The storage of research data is transferred from centralized servers to a decentralized and permanent blockchain.

“Decentralized Science (DeSci) has successfully transformed Meme into The liquidity of the currency is introduced to universities and laboratories around the world to support real scientific research.” The founder of BIO Protocol’s reply to CZ on value realization and more practical applications.

BIO Protocol business model, source: https://docs.bio .xyz/bio

The current popularity of the DeSci concept is mainly supported by the wealth effect driven by memes. Due to the short-term huge exposure, the development of the industry has been affected by the market. Caught in emotions. However, the field of scientific research requires continuous and huge capital investment and faces high risks and high failure rates, which is contrary to Meme's short-term speculation and rapid liquidity depletion characteristics.

Therefore, in the short term, a large number of speculators will enter this track, wanting to use this as a gimmick to release project financing, and for the purpose of "financing is profit" , rather than sincerely devoted to scientific research. Therefore, after experiencing a brief period of popularity, DeSci will enter a stage of eliminating falsehoods and retaining authenticity, and gradually cultivate users' awareness of DeSci in the process of educating the market. Only then will it be possible to truly realize "the use of crypto-finance to drive the realization of scientific research results." Target.

Currently, the demand for data storage and on-chain proof behind DeSci is extremely huge. If DeSci can break through the boundaries with the popularity of Meme and effectively establish a mature business model, then decentralized storage will become the infrastructure of the DeSci field. This stable and huge demand will greatly promote the development of the decentralized storage ecosystem. develop.

Decentralized storage has matured, and the infrastructure behind Desci cannot be underestimated

Decentralized storage has experienced from the early Storj to Filecoin, Arweave and the IPF behind itMultiple stages of development of the S protocol. A May 2023 analysis noted that decentralized storage is on average about 78% cheaper than centralized storage, and in enterprise-level data storage, this difference can be as high as 121 times. In addition, decentralized storage has obvious advantages in data security, privacy and reliability. However, although some Web2 customers have begun to accept decentralized storage solutions such as Filecoin and Arweave, centralized storage with a more intuitive user experience and mature product system still dominates the market. Rather, Filecoin’s limitations in programmability and permanent data storage, as well as the relatively high costs brought about by Arweave’s focus on “permanent storage,” are still pain points that the industry has not fully solved.

Comparison of centralized storage and decentralized storage, source: Binance Research

In April last year, Binance announced the launch of BNB Greenfield, marking a new level of decentralized storage. The biggest feature of Greenfield is to provide a decentralized storage infrastructure for the entire BNB Chain ecosystem, enabling users and decentralized applications (DApps) to create, store and exchange fully owned data. Through the native cross-chain bridge with BSC, users can freely transfer BNB between BSC and Greenfield, thereby conveniently interacting with DApps built on Greenfield.

Compared with IPFS and Arweave, BNB Greenfield’s advantages lie in its deep integration with BNB Chain, cross-chain support, and the combination of decentralized storage and computing capabilities. As well as low cost and high efficiency. This makes Greenfield more suitable for decentralized finance (DeFi), smart contracts and Web3 application scenarios, with stronger scalability and ecological synergy. Imagine the future, GreenField can be used in the following scenarios, including but not limited to:

Website hosting: users can quickly deploy and host websites through API, simplifying registration and payment process.

Personal cloud storage: Use private keys to create secure personal cloud storage and easily upload and download encrypted files.

Blockchain data storage: Store BNB Smart Chain and other ecological data, reduce delays and improve availability.

Content publishing: creation The author stores and mirrors the work to the BNB smart chain, and the buyer can access it after completing the transaction.

Social media: Social media celebrities can fully control the content data through Release and benefit from a centralized platform

Personal data market: Provide decentralized data storage and management solutions to ensure the security of personal data.

At the same time, the development of GreenField has also left Without the support of its ecological projects, this year BNB Ecology officially launched a community voting event for its favorite projects. There are 5 categories in the ecology. In the Infra category, 4EVERLAND and BAS, as Greenfield’s native infrastructure, are its Very important component.

BNB Ecosystem Catalyst Awards Candidates, source: Binance Square

4EVERLAND< p style="text-align: left;">4EVERLAND is the largest decentralized storage provider in the Greenfield ecosystem. As an officially certified storage provider (SP) and validator, 4EVERLAND provides powerful capabilities on Greenfield. Storage resources, while supporting BNB Chain and opBNB networks are committed to building an efficient decentralized storage network. By integrating the features and advantages of IPFS and Arweave on the basis of GreenField, 4EVERLAND provides a better integrated storage network solution and a more user-friendly experience. And reduces the difficulty of using decentralized storage

The key advantages are:

Dual role of storage and verification: as Greenfield As a storage provider (SP) and verifier, 4EVERLAND not only provides users with storage solutions, but also participates in the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism to ensure the security of the blockchain.

Multi-chain support and compatibility: In addition to Greenfield, 4EVERLAND also supports BNB Chain and opBNB.

Combining decentralized storage and computing resources: 4EVERLAND not only provides storage services, but also combines its own 4Ever Node to use idle hardware to provide users with instant access to stored data. + Computing to achieve more efficient data usage scenarios.

Flexible storage solution: 4EVERLAND provides a hybrid solution suitable for hot storage and cold storage, combining IPFS + Arweave/Greenfield storage model to meet different storage needs and Compatible with Web2.

Decentralized AI service: Through AI RPC (API standard), 4EVERLAND provides an aggregation solution for 100+ models, providing users with efficient AI model calling services .

4EVERLAND also provides DWeb hosting services and occupies an important position in the Greenfield ecosystem. It provides developers with one-click deployment functions, allowing dApp front-ends to be quickly deployed. Go to Greenfield storage, and implement RAAS (Rollup as a service), which is what BNB ecology wants to do in the future, to realize the one-click chain start function.

Currently, 4EVERLAND has more than 3 million registered users, 100,000+ daily active users, and stores 2,000 TB in IPFS (third in the IPFS ecosystem) and 20 in Arweave. TB (third in the Arweave ecosystem), Greenfield has 30k+ daily interactions (first in the Greenfield ecosystem). In terms of financing, it has received funding from BNBChain, Polygon, Optimism, IPFS, Arweave and ICP, as well as support from multiple well-known investment institutions.

Recently, 4EVERLAND has cooperated with multiple project parties of DeSci to jointly promote the decentralized storage of scientific research documents. Some of DeSci's data that is not determined to be modified are suitable for permanent storage in Arweave, while some data that is in a continuously updated state are suitable for IPFS and GreenField. 4EVERLAND combines IPFS, Arweave and Greenfield to establish a decentralized storage solution suitable for DeSci by placing cold backup data on Arweave and hot data access on GreenField.

BAS

BNB Attestation Service (BAS), as the underlying data protocol standard of BNB, aims to generate authentication of verification information and is used to transfer tens of millions of trusted private Data is introduced into the Web3 ecosystem, especially to provide data support for AI. The characteristics of BAS are:

Decentralized verification service: By introducing Web2 and Web3 data into the chain, it provides cross-platform verification services, supporting Binance, Coinbase, etc. Exchange information, as well as data from social platforms such as X and TikTok. Not only that, for example, the research data verification service involved in DeSci can also directly use BAS to verify and upload the results to the chain.

User sovereignty and data privacy: Users can actively upload data through the dApp project party using the data set created by BAS and the defined data format standards; reducing the need for third parties Carry out data annotation and clarity, realize active classification and standardization of data, and return the sovereignty of users to process their own data.

AI training and data set services: Through decentralized data verification, BAS will directly provide the most reliability and availability for AI training and data set needs. data.

Ecosystem cooperation and application: BAS has established connections with more than 3,000 independent certification parties, more than 100 data resource providers and more than 100 ecological partners , supports more than 30M authentications.

For Greenfield, the introduction of BAS provides it with data verification and management capabilities, further enhancing the security, transparency and user control of the platform, making Greenfield Become a more stable decentralized storage solution. By integrating with BAS, Greenfield can ensure data validation and compliance while providing efficient data management and permission control capabilities.

An attempt at sustainable development in the crypto industry

GreenField is an and...Its important strategic layout has also been a major ecological innovation in the BNB ecosystem since its launch. Unlike opBNB, BNB chain is the "main force in front of the stage" that directly faces C-end users. GreenField will work more quietly behind the stage. Its own high performance and high interoperability will also be more conducive to the development of the new narrative of the industry. .

If DeSci's business model is verified, coupled with Binance's traffic support, this will undoubtedly greatly promote the prosperity of the BNB ecosystem, and Green Field will also gain significant Adoption at scale. So far, this article has only affirmed the value investment potential of decentralized storage. From a more macro perspective, what really matters to our tens of millions of encryption users and practitioners is whether the development of the encryption industry can last forever. sustainable development.

CZ, Binance official, Vitalik has recently emphasized the importance of DeSci and has really invested real money to support this field. Even the official Binance account published a research report on DeSci to rectify its name. This is undoubtedly a greatly innovative attempt, rather than just hyping a concept. Behind the industry dynamics is the vision that blockchain finance can truly serve the market, realize value, and promote blockchain technology to truly contribute to society.