Filecoin Filecoin Liftoff - the Main Event, 22 Oct 2020

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Bridging Filecoin and Ethereum

Description

Building Web3 with Juan Benet and Joe Lubin.

Join us for Filecoin Liftoff Week, an action-packed series of talks, workshops, and panels curated by the web3 community to celebrate the Filecoin mainnet launch and chart the network’s future. https://liftoff.filecoin.io/

Events take place all week, October 19-23, 2020.

For more information on Filecoin
- visit the project website: https://filecoin.io/
- or follow Filecoin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Filecoin

Get Filecoin community news and announcements in your inbox, monthly: http://eepurl.com/gbfn1n

Chapters
00:00 How is the Filecoin launch going?
01:45 New partnership
04:50 How does Filecoin work?
09:48 Does a competitive storage market help consumers?
11:35 Additional markets
12:30 What is special about the data being stored?
16:20 Benefits of the DeFi bridge
18:15 Collaboration with MetaMask
24:10 How does the verified service work?
30:22 How are you working to make this a more decentralized process?
32:25 Infura, IPFS + Filecoin
36:20 Future of Web3
45:25 Q&A

A

Ah! fantastic!, we have everyone here, and this is an incredibly exciting panel that we have lined up for you today.

A

joining us today to celebrate the launch of filecoin, to celebrate some very exciting news of a collaboration today,. I would like to welcome to the show joseph lubin, who's, the founder and ceo of consensys and juan benet who's. The founder and ceo of protocol labs.

A

Welcome to the show guys.

B

Thanks naomi., hey juan.

C

Thank you very much.,.

A

Hey joe., so we're going to dive into all things filecoin today, but there was some very exciting news: announced.

A

there is a collaboration between protocol labs and consensys., so we're going to dive into that, what that looks like today in the panel., but to start us off juan,. I would love to just hear from you.: do you want to, just for the viewers who might be just joining in for the first time hearing about this,?

A

Do you want to just give an overview of filecoin and why this is important?.

C

Yeah, definitely. filecoin is a blockchain that aims to build a decentralized,.

C

Robust, and efficient foundation for humanities, information.

C

And they create a decentralized storage network where miners on one side provide storage and then clients on the other side use that storage..

C

So you can think of it like an airbnb kind of model, but for cloud storage, where anybody can add racks and racks of hard drives and rent that out to people on the internet.

C

And it is blockchain. first, it is. You use cryptocurrency to hire the storage.

C

And now that I work here,, it has about 600 plus petabytes of capacity,.

C

Which is a huge amount of data.

C

Waiting there for people to use it.

C

so now a whole bunch of applications in web3 can now actually use a proper blockchain native storage, structure,.

C

As opposed to having to use kind of the centralized cloud system.

A

And that's a pretty impressive goal: there. moving away from this reliance that we've had on centralized servers. It really does feel like we're moving into the future.

A

looking at all of the decentralized application, we have currently were starting to decentralize storage, where decentralizing finance,, it's a pretty exciting world that we're moving into.

A

So let's talk about the launch of filecoin,, so this happened last week,. How has that all gone so far?.

C

Launching a blockchain is not an easy thing., it's been something we've been working on and working towards for many years.

C

And the network moved from the test net.

C

Into the main net, with again,, a huge amount of capacity.

C

And that went very smoothly..

C

It was a big moment for a lot of people around the world.

C

Thousands of miners around the world.

C

Participated in all of the storage that added up to the network., and now it's live., the network is live, and there applications on it. Using the storage and yeah, we're here, today.

A

Absolutely., I feel like it was one of the most anticipated launches from this sort of 2017 ico boom.

A

This project,, a lot of people, were looking at it, eyeing it waiting for this moment. and they've been waiting for a while and finally,. You guys have launched. people like eric boy. He so said, "this is one of the most well executed projects out there,.

A

Keep an eye on it." like it seems pretty exciting., and then the news today,, so consensys just announced that there's this collaboration with protocol labs..

A

The idea is that we're going to be growing the decentralized.

A

Storage ecosystem and integrating it with ethereum.

A

At every layer of the decentralized technology stack.

A

Joseph,, do you want to walk us through what exactly that means?.

B

Hmm, might take too much time to enumerate all the difference. (Laughs).

A

Do you want to spend the next several hours going into in depth? well,? Let's start with talking about the consensys product, suite. yeah. yeah. just talk about,. First of all, I'd love to hear from you like.

A

Why is filecoin interesting to the ethereum ecosystem?.

A

Why is this something that you guys wanted to integrate? With?.

B

We certainly started life as an ethereum company.

B

And we still are an ethereum company, but the long-term goal for,. I think, many in our ecosystem.

B

Is to build a decentralized protocols, ecosystem.

B

Which consists of different kinds of blockchains that subserve different purposes.

B

So trusted transactions,, guaranteed execution of agreements,.

B

Benefit from distributed storage,.

B

All of that benefits from a bandwidth,.

B

The identity and heavy compute and proof of location.

B

That are all based on decentralized protocols.

B

So the reason that we are so excited.

B

To have been working with protocol labs for quite a long time and continue to work with them heavily in the future.

B

And to offer as much functionality as we can.

B

Both into their ecosystem and interoperating, with many elements.

B

That consensys puts out or that are already running in the ethereum ecosystem.

B

Is simply because applications require.

B

Lots of different functionality.- and this is the next generation of the worldwide web.

B

The increasingly decentralized worldwide web- and so we have been collaborating with one.

B

And the many teams in the protocol labs ecosystem.

B

To build out several, we can call them products,.

B

Some of it's r&d work, that's leading to products.

B

Some of it hasn't been taken up by our product teams,.

B

Those include our commerce and decentralized finance group codify.

B

It includes our infrastructure group infura..

B

It includes the metamask, wallet and plugin system, team.

B

And so we're essentially approaching this.

B

From a full stack,.

B

Full functionality perspective.

B

a couple of the initial elements that are launching, immediately, or or soon.

B

Are two of them are coming? Out of our codify group.-.

B

One is codify activate, has built a filecoin storage, market.

B

So essentially, that enables a view of the storage marketplace.

B

Can be accessible through a web app or through an api.

B

Goal is make price discovery for storage on the filecoin network.

B

As efficient, transparent as possible.

B

And so miners who offer a data, storage services.

B

Will be able to use the app to essentially expose.

B

What they're offering, announce pricing, and availability.

B

And so just an elegant interface.

B

So that users can access the available storage.

A

Yeah., let's dive into that for a little bit, because I want to kind of talk about how the storage system works. cause you guys,. As you mentioned this new product suite.

A

Does have a lot of different components. there's the storage system,, the defi bridge,, all of that., so let's go through them, one at a time, kind of dig into it.

A

juan,. Do you want to also maybe just give us a little bit of an explanation of how this storage system works and a bit more detail??

A

And then we can talk about how this integration, with consensys and with the ethereum network as well.

A

How this is all going to, what this is all going to look like?.

C

Yeah. sounds good., so I'll describe how filecoin works kind of a bit.

C

At a high level. and then also mention the integration points to a carrier.

C

Kind of back and forth and like what each brings to the other.

C

in the beginning of our development, there was ipfs.

C

And ipfs is content, addressed storage distribution system.

C

That allows you to address information with a cryptographic, hash. and that's been super useful for all of web3 and all of the decentralized web at work..

C

It became, kind of one of the main and main ways to build dapps over the last five years.

C

A lot of ethereum applications,, for example, use ipfs to address information, whether it's a front end for a ui,.

C

For an application, or whether it's actually data that's being computed on.

C

Or whether it's a smart contract, referring to some piece of data and whatnot., notably like ens points names kind of like.

C

The domain name system,, but the ethereum name system points names to ipfs hashes to build websites..

C

So you can now have an ens power domain name.

C

On the ethereum blockchain that points to an ipfs hash.

C

And you can get the website from ipfs.

C

But now one of the big problems that had been kind of standing was that all of that ipfs data had to be stored in ipfs nodes.

C

That either you were running individually or you were kind of hiring another party to store for you.

C

And usually, when you hire another party.

C

And by the way,, ethereum has been one of the best pending services.

C

These are what we call the services storing ipfs content for many years.

C

Usually they run on top of kind of centralized cloud infrastructure and for a lot of applications and for a lot of systems.

C

It would be really useful and nice to be able to make that process itself decentralized and make that the actual storage of the network.

C

Be blockchain powered,, as opposed to having to go on the centralized network..

C

So that's where the filecoin comes in., so filecoin comes in as a way to say,. Okay, great you have your ipfs hash is pointing to a lot of content, whether it's data or websites or images,, whatever it may be.

C

And let's just store that in the decentralized network itself., and so you can think of all of the current apps that already use ipfs as being able to now.

C

Back up all of that data to filecoin., so that's kind of what filecoin brings to the table.. So for a lot of ethereum developers,. What that means is now they can have long-term storage. That is crypto-powered.

C

And crypto-native, without having to sort of rely on more web oriented model.

C

But it also means you can start writing contracts.

C

That kind of higher up that storage in a more automated way..

C

So maybe you no longer have to have an organization that kind of hires a storage provider to just store of the data.. Now you can have a contract hiring the network.

C

To store the data, and, like that's a kind of paradigm shift, that's pretty important. so for ethereum developers,. That brings a whole bunch of functionality..

C

Now in the reverse,, ethereum has the most diverse.

C

And prolific smart contract platform out there., you have all kinds of systems and contracts built out in ethereum.

C

And the biggest defi event in the whole world.

C

And the biggest network of defi systems., and so that brings all of the power of both smart contracts.

C

On the applications you might build, with kind of like business logic, on ethereum to filecoin and the storage in filecoin and ipfs,, plus, all of sort of the decentralized finance aspects of being able to write, create all kinds of contracts.

C

And financial instruments and structures that the defi enables you to do.

C

and so, for example, right now, one of the big things that people in the filecoin ecosystem.

C

Wants to be able to do is is be able to kind of like loan out and to be able to use it as part of collateral.. So that's one of the areas where ethereum is perfect.

C

For this kind of thing,.

A

For sure. and I love this movement towards you're, taking out these centralized players., I think we've had such a reliance on things like cloudflare and aws and like if either of these things go down.

A

The whole internet goes down., and so I love the idea of finding alternatives and really moving towards this decentralized future. There.

A

But there's also another element of this which you kind of touched on, and I want to talk about how this new storage system interface.

A

Is going to help with this.? Is this price discovery mechanism?

A

the ability for people to have a competition in the market.

A

To source out people who can compete with storage prices and all that.

A

joseph,, do you want to walk us through exactly how this is going to play out and how this benefits consumers? If they're, looking for better deals?.

B

It's a free and open market., I'm not sure how much more there is to it.

B

So miners who have storage to offer can do so.

B

At different prices and indicate what the characteristics of that particular deal, are.

B

And essentially, a deal proposal can be put together.

B

Enabling customization of storage based on.

B

Price, storage, amount, duration, and there are rich expressive dimensions.

B

For those who want to store data.

B

And similarly, for those who are offering storage.

A

So will this interface give people the ability to know in some cases what they're, storing or?.

A

'cause I've heard that there are certain ways that this could operate as a more efficient way of getting data to people. like if you want to access a video, and you realize.

A

That the video isn't available in singapore,, for example,.

A

Then you might host it in singapore. and that's like just a quicker way for people to get access to this. so,. But my understanding is that everything is highly encrypted in the filecoin network.

A

And so through this interface that you guys are creating.

A

Are there different levels that, in some cases, people will know what they're storing and other cases they will just agree to store kind of a bulk collection of data?.

B

Yeah. so juan can provide a more detailed answer than I am able to,, but certainly there is a primary storage and retrieval.

B

Where essentially,, you know what you stored.

B

And you can go ahead and retrieve that., but there's also a really important cdn functionality.

B

Where certain groups, organizations.

B

Are aware of certain content and are aware that that content will be in demand.

B

At a certain point in time,, perhaps in a certain region of the world., and they can configure their resources.

B

And the data that they're actually storing so that.

B

They can profitably supply that when there is demand.

A

Yeah. juan did you want to take over and kind of elaborate on that a little?.

C

Yeah. and in the question that you asked around, kind of knowing what you're, storing in so on., certainly even an application.

C

Usually, applications will encrypt all their content before adding it in and sending it to a miner.

C

And so miner won't be able to look at the the actual content itself, but minors. Clients know who each other are for the most part like high repetition, clients and high reputation. Miners might actually know which parties that they're transacting with.

C

of course,. This is anonymous., so anybody can generate kind of unknown identifiers.

C

Like in any blockchain., and so you can have some degree of anonymity- that's available,, but for the most part kind of as a reputation develops in the ecosystem.

C

Miners in general might be selective about what data from what clients they might access..

C

This is also becoming pretty important around the world in terms of different kinds of content policies that have to be followed by various different people around the world., and so one of the big principles that we've had for web3.

C

For a very long time is that you want to put the power and decision-making in the user's hands, like in the human sense of what they want to do with the computing environment..

C

So there's really means sort of having really good same defaults for parties in various different countries and whatnot., but really leave it up to the users to sort of decide.

C

The content policy that's appropriate for the network.

C

and then that conduct policy map to a reputation system can handle most of the kinds of problems.

C

That might arise around knowing exactly what you need to be storing and whatnot..

C

So it's kind of like the way to address that area of things,.

C

But in general the content itself, you need to all to be encrypted because you don't want any application. User would not want their content viewable by anybody.

C

And one really important thing here is today: when you store your content on the centralized cloud, it's usually sort of encrypted on the way there, but then decrypted and stored in the clear..

C

So most of your personal data.

C

And your business data is stored in the clear in the cloud somewhere., so that means that the cloud provider can see it.

C

The people running the infrastructure for the cloud provider could theoretically see it.. Of course they have policies to prevent any kind of abuse, but that's all only as strong as those organizations.

C

And those policies, are. we've seen a lot of different kinds of abuses worldwide, where certain governments like overstep or certain companies overstep and or maybe hackers go in.

C

Like breach a whole bunch of private sensitive data., and so we think it's really important that what the web3 brings kind of user controlled encryption.

C

Or user protecting encryption that puts the power in users' hands to decide who they actually want to share that information with their personal private information with and create a sort of self-sovereign identity and self-sovereign data storage. Medium.

C

And that's where filecoin really shines, because by default, all the data should be.

C

User encrypted in the user, side.

C

and the source providers would just not know not be able to look at that. Information.

A

Absolutely. and there's also this interesting part of filecoin, where I believe, like everything, is uniquely encrypted., so you can actually see how many copies of what you want to store are out there.

A

when you put things in a centralized server, you're kind of hoping, that, "well,, I'm storing this. Let's hope they have a backup".

A

And you kind of trusting them., but this actually provides a cryptographic proof of.

A

How many copies of your data is out there, which is really cool part of the system.?

A

I want to dive into the defi bridge..

A

So ethereum has really been this strong hold of the defi movement. they've really created it to a certain degree.

A

Because of this interoperability., you have this entire world. That's developed with all these different interchangeable assets., it's a pretty exciting world..

A

So I wanted to dive into this and say like what are the benefits to filecoin of a system like this?.

A

So, joseph,: do you want to start us off there?.

B

Sure. so again,, our codify team has built.

B

What we're calling a defi bridge.

B

Between the ethereum protocol and the filecoin protocol.

B

It enables the fil f-I-l token.

B

To effectively move across the bridge,.

B

Turning into an erc, 20 wrapped fil token.

B

So that it can participate in at their in based defi activities.

B

So one can earn yield potentially on their wrapped fil.

B

One could contribute some wrapped fil.

B

To a set protocol portfolio and see it perhaps automatically managed in that portfolio.

B

One can lend or borrow their apt fil token.

B

Which is extremely valuable,, especially in the early stages.

B

Of the rollout of the filecoin ecosystem.

B

Because many who wants to participate.

B

In storing data on the network need to effectively stake. Fil tokens on the network.

B

And so one can acquire wrapped fil tokens.

B

And convert them into native filecoin, fil tokens.

B

By sending them back over the bridge and use those for staking purposes so that one can increase one's capacity.

B

With respect to staking.

A

Every time you say one can create one's capacity,.

A

I keep wondering, are you saying juan can create capacity., like I just say, is this juan? (laughs).

C

It's me and the machines they have me in a server rack having all to myself.

A

Exactly. so there's also this,, I mean,, as well as liquidity being provided, and this really helping the filecoin ecosystem, you've also got this user base.. So metamask has this giant user base, and there's also this integration, that's happening with metamask.. You guys want to dive into explaining what that will look like, and how that benefits. That's both sides,, both the ethereum network and filecoin?.

B

Sure, I'll start. metamask is doing astonishingly well,.

B

We're at around one and a half million users.

B

Most of whom are monthly actives.

B

And recently rolled out a snaps platform,.

B

Which is doing really well., so filecoin is essentially taking a prominent role.

B

We have a plugin architecture.

B

Or an extensible api system called metamask snaps.

B

That enables essentially new functionality.

B

To be brought into the metamask ecosystem.

B

So it enables other protocols to be connected to by metamask.

B

And this situation, we're going to roll out a snap.

B

That essentially, shows connects to the filecoin network.

B

Shows different data around the fil token.

B

From vice network access, rpc apis.

B

And this is a sort of a first pass enablement.

B

Of fil within metamask and of course that will make fil available in all.

B

Of the trading and other functionalities that metamask has rolled out and we'll continue to roll out,.

B

But also fil token is all about storage.

B

And so one might see, storage implicated.

B

Within metamask, as well at some point.

A

Juan did you want to add on? yeah,? I was just going to mention that dan finlay.

C

From metamask actually gave a talk earlier today,.

C

About talking about the snaps and talk about the samples, I'll link it here in the chat.

C

and yeah., it's really amazing and remarkable to be able to actually see a a demo of filecoin actually.

C

In the medic masculine, and being able to use it.

C

All of the that, by far as the kind of most used portal.

C

To the blockchain world.

C

and so for any kind of the app to be able to use a filecoin seamlessly and so on,.

C

Being integrated with metamask is a huge thing.

C

and so being able to use filecoin right away.

C

From all kinds of applications and being able to kind of think of being able.

C

To take a bunch of the dabs that are out there right now, already transacting with ether or any of the erc 20 tokens on ethereum.

C

And now being able to kind of associate user data storage.

C

Alongside their application, and then being able to pay for that data storage themselves., so those are the kinds of things that start becoming possible once you start associating.

C

Your wallet,, your identity, your wallet.

C

With filecoin itself as well. and so possibilities include the kind of the ens naming thing that I mentioned earlier.

C

And matching just being able to pay for your storage bill.

C

For your own bandwidth bill directly from your wallet.

C

As well in the same kind of way,, as opposed to having to go through another service.

B

Let me just jump in there.. There's a lot going on. Here.

B

filecoin provides an enormous amount of.

B

High-Powered functionality. some of it's around pure data storage, but I think it's really important to emphasize.

B

What I think of, as the holy grail of our ecosystem,.

B

Which is providing tools, enable people to build fully decentralized applications.

B

And so you can build partially.

B

Decentralized applications on ethereum.

B

You can go to some efforts to make them more decentralized,.

B

Or fully decentralized., and by that, I mean that you really need the user interface elements.

B

To be decentralized or to be sitting in distributed, permissionless storage.

B

And so that's one of the real breakthroughs here.

B

Where the front ends of these applications.

B

Whose back ends might be sitting on ethereum.

B

Are now fully permissionlessly decentralized.

B

And the metamask snap is basically able to detect.

B

Or is detectable by any web3 enabled sites.

B

So any fully decentralized application.

B

Will be able to instantly detect and communicate.

B

With a decentralized wallet in the form of metamask.,.

A

That's really cool and also cool to see how.

A

Through this iterative process, people are making these systems more robust, just by taking out centralized mechanisms, one by one.

A

And we're kind of figuring out as a community using different projects like the integration of ethereum.

A

And filecoin figuring out how to make this possible., it's really beautiful to watch that blossoming that.

A

So there are,, as you mentioned, there, have already been lots of companies interacting with ipfs for a long time..

A

You mentioned that ethereum has been using ipfs for a long time, and really this is now the monetization of ipfs,, which is very cool..

A

I wanted to talk about some of the companies that are interacting with this, because it seems that the network has been seeded by.

A

Certain verified providers, who are storing things that are important to all of us like wikileaks or climate data, or all of these things that we kind of want to be,, want to be exist on the internet.

A

Without the ability for it to be tampered with, for example.

A

So I want you just talk about that process and then we'll go into talking about ethereum.

A

And in particular, and how they've been using this ipfs system over the years.

A

Dig into that a bit more. but juan. Can you explain to me this verified storage provider or storer? I should say system how that works?.

C

Yeah, totally., so maybe I'll mention some of the organizations that have been diving into this and then I'll mention kind of the verified storage service.

C

And how that's kind of developed., so the whole,, an ecosystem, has been kind of.

C

Growing tremendously over the last year,, more and more organizations are starting to gravitate to it.

C

And joining the chain.

C

And joining the ecosystem and building out different parts of the tooling or building applications, and so on., first and foremost,, just the mining companies are a huge fraction of that.

C

Like there's a lot of individual and groups that are even forming companies or have formed companies that have been in operation for a while to mind filecoin.- and these are kind of like a storage provider., so that's one part., then there's a whole bunch of folks building, developer tools.. So there's groups like textile and fleek.

C

And now truffle and others and metamask and whatnot that are bringing a bunch of the developer tooling.

C

To the ecosystem. and so building ways of plugging in your applications.

C

And so on. and then there's groups that are actually going through and starting to build out different kinds of applications.

C

And so we had a hackathon about,, I think, a month and a half ago that you'll get about 100 plus projects.

C

That are now building a lot of their stuff on filecoin.

C

Right now, there's two things going: on.

C

one is the apollo fellows program where there's a whole bunch of other.

C

Obligations developing as well. there's, a number of groups that are doing ether online.

C

As well, that are kind of hacking on the network. and so from all of those, there's some fraction of those that will go on and become applications that sound test of time.

C

So many things that we use today actually started as as hackathon projects and things like that., but then there's also kind of much more and a fleshed out applications coming to the filecoin ecosystem..

C

Many of these are just groups that have been using our application for a long time that are now kind of starting to migrate..

C

And some of them are entirely new., so one that we're really proud of is slate,.

C

Which is a,, I think, of it kind of like a.

C

Kind of part, social network, part a photography, website.

C

It's like a really nice user experience that almost at this point, it feels indistinguishable from web2. and that's an amazing kind of line to cross.

C

like there's a threshold where suddenly a web3 app.

C

Just feels indistinguishable from kind of a normal, centralized application. and that's the bar. You want to hit to be able to for webster to really cross a chasm and kind of really build a consumer applications with the future.

C

That kind of bar has to be hit.

C

and that's a really great place to be.

C

some of the verified clients, programs,.

C

So where this came from was that.

C

Filecoin has a specific problem around being able.

C

To tell whether or not data is...

C

So if you incentivize a lot of data storage,.

C

To be added to the network,, then parties could collude.

C

And kind of hire themselves for storage.

C

And so you can create kind of like this feedback loop and the incentive structure, where you're not actually storing anything, real or useful, you're, just sort of hiring yourself..

C

So the way we solve that was with kind of like a layer, two protocol.

C

Where clients had want to store a lot of data can sort of get a verifiable claim added to the network.

C

That kind of states that their application.

C

Is kind of trusted up to a certain amount of data.

C

And so you can think of this as a very easy sort of verification process.

C

Where imagine, there's a video site and they say, "hey,. We generate about a hundred terabytes of data.

C

Per day or per month" or something like that., and they get kind of this claim that gives them that amount of data to be able to add to the network.

C

And that verify the claim gives them the ability to greatly incentivize miners to store that data..

C

So it creates this multiplier in the block reward for them.

C

That makes that data very sought after..

C

So what the does is that it creates the ability.

C

For the parties that joined that program.

C

And kind of go through this additional kind of verification to kind of prove to the network that they are indeed storing, really valuable and useful. Data.

C

Then it gives them dramatically: cheaper storage prices.

C

Than otherwise., so you can have totally anonymous content that nobody kind of checks and whatnot, and that set a particular price point to the network. Prices.

C

And then there's kind of a very large discount for parties.

C

That go through that additional verification, process., and that gives the network this ability to just point to extremely valuable datasets.

C

That we want to be backed up and replicated for the longterm.

C

And just make it incredibly cheap to store that. so think, of,, archives of scientific data,.

C

Think of a wikipedia, think of all the open access, journals,.

C

Like all of the really valuable historical data for humanity,.

C

And to be able to replicated a ton across the network.

C

And extremely cheaply., so we want to create a kind of an arc of all the valuable information for humanity and make it super cheap to store..

A

That's cool., and so this sort of board that exists to verify these users.

A

Is there a path to making this a more decentralized process?.

C

Yeah,, so it's sort of it is community governance and it's kind of like a a three layer structure.

C

Where the community, through kind of a repository.

C

And get hub kind of accepts applications for verifiers.

C

And these verifiers are entities tasked with going through that task with running the verification, process., so think of this similar as kind of how you might build an identity system., so a decentralized identity system.

C

If you want it to actually check that humans are indeed humans., you do have to have some sort of verifiable claim.

C

Pulled in somewhere and you do need some kind of real world verification move in., so think of this is the same sort of process..

C

So once these verifiers are accepted by the community and that itself is a decentralized governance process.

C

Then those verifiers are trusted again up to a certain amount. so,, and then those verifiers are on the hook for making sure.

C

That the verification that they give to the clients.

C

Are good and correct, and so on.

C

there's a whole talk about this. This whole system, this week.

C

so, I'm kind of browsing over a lot of the details that goes into at a much greater depth,, but that layer system allows us to sort of pick verifiers across the world.

C

So you want a number of entities around the world.

C

That will know the organizations in those regions of the world, and we'll know what is a legitimate organization versus not.

C

And you also want verifiers across a wide variety of use, cases..

C

So in a sense, you can think of the verifiers in the system as being kind of like a business development, arm,.

C

Where they, you kind of pick, a super node in an industry.

C

That knows all of the other organizations that understand that industry and you empower them with this super cheap discount on data storage.

C

And they said, "hey,, you know, like all the right organizations in your network.", go on offer them this, like amazing storage, deal., and then that's a,. It's a way to turn it around..

C

It's not just gatekeepers,. It's really recruiting a decentralized business development, arm.

A

Yeah. joseph, so you mentioned before that there are lots of ethereum and consensys apps that have been using ipfs for years through infura.

A

And the idea is that ethereum app data.

A

Can be stored geographically distributed way.

A

That it's not necessarily centralized.. Does this supplement the idea of like ethereum nodes for example,, also being geographically dispersed, ?.

A

That idea of keeping this network robust,, how do those different things interplay with each other?.

B

Let me answer the infura question first, and then maybe I can expand a little bit.

B

We have indeed been providing api access to ipfs.

B

For quite a long time and using it in in any consensys applications.

B

And in applications across the ethereum ecosystem.

B

So it's pinning and accessing pin content.

B

I think that there are millions of unique objects that had been stored and think it's over.

B

For there's a lot of data transfer every day.

B

Around this application.

B

we are moving into a beta for a filecoin api.

B

So, first of all, we're increasing the capabilities of the ipfs api.

B

Through infura,, and also launching a beta for filecoin.,.

B

The beta will essentially provide an api.

B

To the filecoin network. developers will be able to get the state of the network in real time,.

B

Read directly from the filecoin blockchain, send payments.

B

Send other messages to the network,.

B

Query the state of the filecoin markets.

B

And answering your second question.

B

Is I think, interesting and complicated.

B

There are lots of ethereum nodes around the world and the spread and number of those nodes.

B

Make it into a pretty massively decentralized protocol.

B

And moving towards.

B

Becoming a much more massively decentralized, protocol.

B

And in order for it to take its place.

B

Or continue its place in being a new trust foundation.

B

For the planet, along with some other decentralized protocols,.

B

Or distributed storage protocols,.

B

We need to define the different dimensions.

B

Of decentralization and make sure that we are decentralized across all of those dimensions.

B

And so, yeah,, absolutely ipfs and filecoin.

B

Enable applications that are reliant.

B

On the ethereum trust foundation to be trustworthy,.

B

Because all the different elements that applications rely on.

B

Are indeed being implemented by decentralized protocols.

B

I think one thing that's really powerful.

B

That's going on here with the launch of filecoin. Is that.

B

We have another heavyweight,, another first class layer, one blockchain protocol.

B

Being introduced into the world., I think that's momentous., I consider.... So there are lots of projects, they call themselves layer, one protocols., I think two legit heavyweight layer. One protocols are.

B

Bitcoin and ethereum., and I would argue that as we build out.

B

The decentralized protocol ecosystem, filecoin, will rapidly take its place.

B

As one of those heavyweight protocols.

A

Yeah, for sure., so we've got a bunch of audience questions before I dive into those.. I wanted to just kind of look forward to the future and what we're most excited about in this system..

A

So we've talked a lot: about, web3.0 ,, this new decentralized age that we're entering.

A

You've got things like ethereum, ipfs,, filecoin,.

A

Different things that have become this whole mock all of this decentralized web..

A

So just looking at that, and this interoperation of all these.

A

And I think ethereum has really led the way there about the idea of different platform, different protocols, having this interoperability, and we've seen how that works.

A

and now you see ethereum and this interoperability with other things like filecoin, which is very interesting.. So I just want to look forward to the future and looking at web 3.0,.

A

How difficult is it going to be to achieve this truly decentralized internet that we really want?? And do you see that happening anytime soon??

A

What sort of a role will ethereum, consensys, filecoin all play in this one?

A

juan? You want to start us off there?.

C

When you compare the current centralized cloud infrastructure and all of the work that has gone into that for many decades to optimize, all of it for all kinds of deployed, use cases.

C

and you compare it against sort of the blockchain web3 world.

C

That is kind of coming in to decentralize those environments.

C

Kind of break them up and so on.

C

There's a huge amount of efficiency that has been achieved.

C

By these centralized parties and a huge amount of lock-in.

C

So think of the app platforms in phones.

C

And in desktop computers and so on.

C

That really control and sensor what applications might go on there.. So for a long time, cryptocurrency was sort of banned.

C

From app stores and whatnot., so there was kind of like a significant advantages there that have to be overcome.

C

and really it's by leaning, on kind of the amazing unfair advantages that blockchains and web3 have they really provide features and functionality that are just either very difficult, outright impossible.

C

Or unlikely to happen in a centralized world.

C

So you can have networks that, for example, share ownership.

C

With the user base in a way that very few have any.

C

Kind of centralized organizations have ever built.

C

And so that alone might create a very large critical mass of users around an application that might force it to open up.. So a good example of this might be the music applications..

C

So video and audios are two examples of music applications.

C

That are using ethereum and ipfs that are building very large communities and are putting that sort of the power of the distribution in the artist's hands and in the audience, to connect together through the platform.

C

and that sort of coming in and building a very strong network effect.

C

Between the people and that alone has been kind of.

C

Successful enough to actually get all their applications.

C

Into the relevant app stores and whatnot., and so it'll be interesting to see how those applications developing and compete with the centralized counterparts.

C

now in terms of the lower level of infrastructure.

C

To really reach sort of the billions of users, worldwide,.

C

And trillions of transactions per second.

C

That these large scale applications really do.

C

That's where blockchains will have to scale quite a bit., so this is where today there might be used for a lot of.

C

The sort of main business logic, or for giving consensys on kind of an accumulated log of transactions.

C

But we really need kind of the scalability that things that ethereum too will bring to be able to actually process the magnitude of transactions.

C

That those kinds of applications really require.

C

So there's a few angles: here. one is the being able to do that. Data search., so something like instagram.

C

Or youtube store exabytes of video.

C

And that's really a staggering figure of storage.

C

and something like filecoin, before filecoin, the largest decentralized storage networks.

C

Kind of had a few petabytes of capacity.

C

But now we have hundreds of petabytes of capacity reaching close to reaching an exabyte., and now that's actually starts to contending with those centralized cloud parties..

C

You could actually now consider and conceive of an application platform.

C

That could actually grow to the scale of the web. Two heavyweights.

C

And so that's just something that wasn't really possible before and now it's becoming possible.. So looking at the computing stack,, you have to hit storage,, you have to do all the different kinds of computation,.

C

You have to do a very efficient computation,. You have to do a kind of like a trust layer and like the business logic of systems,.

C

And really lean into the unfair advantages of web3, where you can build stronger connections to the community.

C

You can make kind of user owned systems from the get-go.

C

As opposed to kind of a corporation controlled systems,.

C

And what you can put kind of the rights of users? First.

C

With better models of encryption and user control,.

C

Self-Sovereign identity,, self-sovereign, data, and all those kinds of facilities will be the advantages that get us to move over.

C

Well, there's a lot statue to build out still.

B

Let me take a sort of a broader perspective.

B

On that question., so if you ask tim berners-lee how hard it would be to stand up a hyper text-based infrastructure.

B

For all the world's information and lots and all the world's e-commerce.

B

And mobile and social networking.

B

he'd say: dauntingly hard., (phone buzzing).

B

I'm just not even going to continue this little http.

B

And html project that I've got going.

B

If you asked steve jobs how hard it would be.

B

To significantly own the mobile phone market.

B

By putting super computers in people's pockets and building applications stores, so that.

B

Much computer functionality is delivered through that.

B

He would say, "of course, we're going to do it and we're going to do it in layers.".

B

And we saw that the first rollout of the iphone.

B

Didn't even have cut and paste.

B

you couldn't copy text and paste it somewhere. Else.

B

And so not only did functionality.

B

Have to be incrementally introduced,, but it had to be understanding.

B

And capability had to be incrementally introduced into people., so the people evolved nearly as much as the product.

B

If you asked vitalik buterin,.

B

How hard is it going to be to stand up a blockchain platform that is fully scalable.

B

For all the world's tokenized financial transactions.

B

And usable, and has privacy and confidentiality,.

B

He would have said, "that's, really hard.

B

Let's launch this practical, smaller.

B

Almost proof of concept system, first.".

B

And so what juan and team have done in standing up.

B

A massive blockchain project in a large storage ecosystem.

B

That they built needs to proceed in layers.

B

They've done an amazing job of incentivizing miners.

B

And building proof of x, algorithms.

B

And just incredible and intricate logic.

B

And it is complicated, but the humans are going to find this really valuable.

B

It's going to start with some of the nerdier humans.

B

That build applications.. It's going to move to other nerdy humans who like to build businesses that take advantage of.

B

The latest in distributed storage.

B

and it's going to make the impossible,.

B

The seemingly impossible possible, and pretty common at some point, soon.

B

and so juan's project, the ethereum project.

B

Many other projects in our ecosystem we're all doing our parts to make that daunting task.

B

Of standing up the web3 ecosystem.

B

Essentially, the next generation,, the next evolution of the worldwide web,.

B

Not just possible, but sort of obvious as we're building it in layers.

B

And it will all seem to make perfect sense in retrospect,.

A

Pretty sure., so I want to get into some audience questions. Here..

A

We've just got a few minutes, left.

A

I'll dive into nelson's question first..

A

So he says, as a small miner he's hopeful, that the filecoin ecosystem continue to grow.

A

Including the localized retrieval mining, aspect.

A

It's a very interesting aspect of filecoin.

A

and I too wonder whether this is going to bring back mining.

A

To like the home computer. cause we kind of lost that with the advent of asics and all of that., it became this very specialized industry,, but I mean, storage space is kind of the same across the board..

A

So I'm wondering too, is this going to become this renaissance of like home mining, enterprises?.

C

That's the hope.! So when you think about data distribution, you really want to store the data and serve it to the user as fast as possible..

C

So that means that the data itself has to be closer to the users.. There's something you can't cheat and that's the speed of light.

C

you're never going to be go faster than the speed of light.

C

and so to be able to transfer a lot of data very quickly to users,.

C

Today, most computing systems deploy all kinds of copies of data, very close to the users in the edge., and so that's where the virtual market of filecoin is coming in.

C

To build out that whole network of users,.

C

Of miners with data storage capabilities.

C

Very close to other users so that the retrieval can be super fast.

C

right now. The retrieval market is in its infancy.

C

It's going to grow over time.

C

right now. The main thing is a storage market.

C

And getting all of the storage capacity and starting to bring the applications. as the applications and the data come in,, then that can start flowing into the retrieval market.

C

There's one kind of really important incentive questions.

C

There, where it'll, make a lot of sense to bring in the retrieval market in larger scales once the applications are there, with the data to provide back demand.

C

Otherwise people might run the whole application and not actually store that many copies of things and whatnot..

C

So that's sort of the retrieval market is going to grow over time as we grow out the client,, the client side of the network.

A

Yap. joseph,. I think this is a question for you, although I'm not quite sure. so chiefing and apologies.

A

If I didn't pronounce that correctly, says for filecoin price discovery, is it to some extent comparable to dexis mechanism, such as reducing slippage,, protect users and provide service at a price that they initially asked? For?.

A

Is that something that you feel you could answer to do with the ethereum's interface that we providing?.

B

Filecoin price discovery or fil price discovering juan. Why don't you step in if that makes sense?.

C

Yeah., I think the question is around the storage market side of things where the price discovery for storage,.

C

If I'm understanding the question correctly, it's around we'll look the sort of decentralized exchanges.

C

For storage and then will the pricing kind of be following.

C

All the good patterns and good features for the statistics--.

A

Yeah., I feel like it is, he is, or she is perhaps talking about the lack of a counter party.

A

That the software itself is the counterparty, so you can just enter in the price that you're after rather than trying to find a bit of spread, I presume, is the question. yeah, exactly.

C

So I mean,, I think, over time as the network grows.

C

And as the capacity starts getting used, as there are more clients and users and so on,, the number of apps and beds on both sides of the search market are going to increase., and at that point it's really going to require the benefit.

C

From that kind of functionality.

C

for the most part right now, a lot of the price and costs of storing the data on the network is being subsidized by the block reward.. So the prices can be really cheap and are mostly kind of just default. Oriented.

C

and they're not kind of,.

C

We're not really hitting like a proper market point where the capacity starting to get used up and miners are becoming price sensitive on the deals..

C

So for the most part, right, now, miners can't afford to just drop the prices dramatically and take a lot of user data..

C

I think they just haven't gotten around to doing that yet, but as the usage of data picks up that'll come in.

B

Right as the system matures, we're going to see.

B

A increasingly efficient price discovery, mechanisms.

B

So it is a more of an order book.

B

Than an automated market maker., we see lots of automated market makers in the defi space.

B

They are valuable for reducing slippage in certain contexts,.

B

In other contexts, they're not so good.

B

And so it's a very valuable functionality.

B

And there will be so many smart people.

B

Both technical, nerds and financial nerds that get in there.

B

And build essentially defi mechanisms around the filecoin.

A

Yeah. miles fullman asks when it comes to media such as music and movies,.

A

Are you concerned the platform will suffer from the same legal issues that mega upload had to deal with? so on the one hand, you could have. These deals.

A

Where you have distribution deals, and I can definitely say, filecoin being a solution to that., but on the other, side,, pirating and all of that,.

A

Is that a concern that you're worried about?.

C

So definitely in any kind of distribution platform, piracy becomes a concern,, but for the most product the piracy has been running for quite a while, and that has been a very small problem which is very good.

C

And part of it is the approach to the content policy that really puts the power in user's hands to define what they want to distribute and what they don't..

C

But I'm actually not that concerned about this in the long-term, because, what's really going to happen here,.

C

Is that music and video will start shifting.

C

The creation and production angles.

C

And so we're seeing it right now with audience new job.

C

They are projects that they're building out the music side of things where creators can come in.

C

And connect with their fans directly and fund their own work and own creation and their own releases directly without having to go to kind of record studios and record labels and whatnot.

C

and they're doing that decentralized, first., and so the real answer to that in the very long term.

C

Is building a dramatically better distribution platform.

C

That maybe starts with the long tail.

C

And then over time starts getting most of the rights.

C

To most of the music and video out, there.

C

now, of course, kind of the large studios and so on will continue to exist and will continue to produce their content.

C

The challenge there will be to create distribution platforms that are compliant with our restrictions.. So for example,, when you stream a movie from netflix, the video is coming to your computer.. Your computer is grabbing that image..

C

Your computer could be snapshotting all of that image and video and redistributing in a peer to peer network.

C

and it kind of in a piracy oriented way.. Now it doesn't happen because it's just fairly hard.

C

And most people don't go around hacking, their systems.

C

So the likelihood of that happening is so low that netflix can afford to give an extremely good user experience. That does provide that without a big burden,.

C

But kind of still keep any kind of problem to a minimum.

C

And we think that that's the answer to most of these questions. most of the piracy doesn't come from a cost model.

C

From like a monetary cost, model., it comes from a usability cost model..

C

It's just way harder to use any kind of walled guarded kind of thing., and so, if you make something that is super easy to use, has a phenomenal user experience and people can pay with their tokens,.

C

That's the way to do. It. like you can have a netflix like service that is fully compliant with all kinds of content, restrictions and so on in web3.

C

That uses tokens to distribute it. and hey, by the way,. You no longer have to leak out what movies and so on.

C

You watching to the to the centralized cloud provider, but there's no reason you can't comply with the company policy.

B

Yeah. yeah., I think, with all the context of great usability,, great user, interface, very inexpensive, content, piracy just doesn't matter., it becomes relevant.

A

Yeah.- and I think that's definitely something that that itunes kind of figured out when we were dealing with napster, etc.

A

And then itunes came along and said web going to make it super cheap and super easy for you to just pay a small amount., and once you see those incentives in line, do you really..., so people kind of stopped pirating.?

A

I think that hbo had this issue in australia, where they just didn't release game of thrones., and so no one in australia had access..

A

So it became like the most pirated show of all time, because the only way they let access to it is to like buy the dvd set or something.. If you guys have a dvd player these days..

A

So it is interesting, as you start to see these incentives models. Align, distribution becomes this whole new game..

A

I love the idea of artists starting to have ownership in their content. More..

A

I love to see what this decentralized movement is doing to the democratization of media, to all of that..

A

I think that filecoin is going to have a huge role in that.

A

I love to see what consensys is doing with that as well., and I am very excited to see this integration see this collaboration and what happens.?

A

Because it's two kind of bedrocks of this decentralized movement and two powerhouses combining their knowledge.

A

And wisdom and skills. I'm very excited to see what's going to happen in the future., but this is... we've actually run out of time here,.

A

But I want to thank you both so much for coming on this panel and chatting about this., and I look forward to seeing what happens in the future..

A

Thank you so much.

C

Thanks naomi., thank you very much. Naomi.