4EVERLAND Versus Traditional IPFS Third Party Solutions
IPFS-based third party solutions
IPFS, or “Interplanetary File System”, is a new hypermedia text transfer protocol, which can be understood as a website that supports distributed storage.
IPFS, on the other hand, stores files on the network using decentralized sharded encrypted storage technology that splits the files into multiple segments that are stored on various nodes of the network. Nodes communicate and transfer data by means of LibP2P routing. But the biggest problem IPFS faces is that most nodes have no obligation or incentive to help users store their data due to the lack of incentives. This is because when fetching data across nodes, it is usually not fetched (the node will automatically delete some data that does not have a Pin); also, if the node has too much data, there may be problems such as slow addressing or even data not being found.
IPFS itself currently suffers from two major shortcomings in terms of user experience.
1. Lack of incentives for nodes to pin data for users (persistent storage).
2. Data is difficult to retrieve and download in a completely discrete public network environment.
The emergence of Filecoin is essentially a blockchain system that adds an incentive layer to IPFS, aiming to create a mechanism for storing and retrieving data based on a blockchain system. Because Filecoin’s storage uses a very complex cryptography mechanism, the hardware required to perform data storage calculations is very costly, which leads to the fact that the current Filecoin storage Provider is basically controlled by a few large vendors, and it is difficult for ordinary users to participate in it, which in a certain procedure greatly weakens the decentralized property of the storage. In addition, data is not stored permanently on Filecoin’s site; each file is stored by the Provider for a storage period, after which the file is deleted, so Filecoin’s storage is also essentially a temporary storage solution.
As a result, the following mainstream third party IPFS-based storage solutions have been derived:
1. An organization or project owner builds a relatively “intranet” IPFS environment API data service based on a mechanism similar to IPFS swarm or IPFS cluster.
2. The user level uses these APIs to store and download data.
3. The organization charges users for data storage and commits them to data storage.
Admittedly, similar project parties, such as Pinata and Vercel, which to some extent solve the problems of IPFS itself, are still not decentralized enough, and the reliability and security of the data is still only on a small number of the project party’s own nodes, and there is still the risk of node downtime and service failure. This goes against the whole idea of decentralization, because if these few nodes hang for some technical reason, then the whole IPFS-based service will crash.
4EVERLAND decentralized storage solution
Based on the above technical and user experience analysis, 4EVERLAND has improved the above product solution. 4EVERLAND has also added PoSC incentives at the IPFS node level.
The PoSC based on TEE:
To ensure that the nodes in the data network all run the same challenging logic, the 4EVERLAND PoSC mechanism will utilize the Trusted Execution Environment technology (TEE), such as SGX of Intel. Each node stores the PoSC program in a TEE environment. In the TEE execution environment of each node, there are two main phases:
- The TEE node running the PoSC program participates in the network.
- The TEE network verifies and synchronizes the challenge data issued by other different nodes.
For phase a, the node’s TEE program will have mutual authentication process with the node which is already in the network by its hardware certificate information and measurable program information.
For phase b, the program running in the node’s TEE environment will continuously follow the rules of PoSC. After the challenge request is finished locally, the node sends the challenge request data and result to the TEE executable network. The nodes in the other TEE trusted environments will verify the request signature and follow the same logic within node TEE to compute and synchronize the related challenge request data locally.
Challenge requests in the TEE network will be synchronised between nodes and 4EVERLAND will count the challenge behaviour of the node population and reward and punish them accordingly through smart contracts.
Storage architecture:
4EVERLAND is compatible with open protocols to form a huge storage network of nodes and relies on node collaboration to achieve persistent storage of specific data. In addition to this, 4EVERLAND’s storage architecture is compatible with open protocols, with global nodes forming a vast storage network and relying on node collaboration to achieve persistent storage of specific data. These nodes are divided into:
Master Nodes: Globally districuted full storage nodes, which are limited to a specific number, ensures the full backup of all data and secure service availability by distributing nodes globally.
Light nodes: Light nodes aren’t limited in number, and they don’t need to store all data, as well as a university available data network for developer by integrating worldwide idle storage resources.
It is thus clear that 4EVERLAND nodes are not owned by a single organization or project owner and are completely decentralized. A storage network consisting of globally decentralized multi-nodes fundamentally avoids the risk of single point of failure and service interruption; in addition, precisely because the nodes are distributed globally, 4EVERLAND-based decentralized storage can also provide differentiated and immediate response services according to the distribution of users.
To sum up, 4EVERLAND has done the following technologies/schemes to build a perfect decentralized storage solution based on IPFS:
1. Incentive scheme for nodes is added, so that nodes are motivated to help users to store data persistently.
2. Based on trusted storage technology, pledge model and DAO governance mechanism to constrain the storage behavior of nodes.
3. Nodes are global, with no single point of downtime or risk of service failure.
4. Can provide differentiated instant response services.
About 4EVERLAND
4EVERLAND is a Web 3.0 cloud computing platform that integrates storage, computing, and network core capabilities. It aims to help the user make a smooth leap from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 and become the infrastructure for millions of Web 3.0 developers and applications.
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