Aleph.im — Roadmap Horizon 2023

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Aleph.im

5 min readJan 10, 2023

It’s incredible to reflect on how much was built in Aleph.im since the launch of the network in 2020 DeFi Summer two years ago.

Let’s take a look at what has been happening in Aleph.im to date:

Aleph.im origin — Synopsys

As builders in web3 space we’ve identified a problem where applications running on public blockchain networks don’t have computing stack solutions that can address mass consumer scale of demand.

While Blockchains are fantastic for consensus and security, it is prohibitive to use Blockchain networks for storage and computation at the scales required by modern day mass consumer applications. What most developers end up with is an architecture where a centralized cloud serves compute requirements.

To solve this issue, a community of open source developers led by Moshe Malawach started Aleph.im project: A decentralized cloud computing network that can serves as general purpose cloud compute solutions: fast and affordable data query, content storage and distribution, elastic compute resource provisioning, confidential computing, modular access control, and digital identity framework.

We started off building proof of concept components of fully decentralized apps, some of which are being currently under redevelopment into future products:

📦Personal storage dApp PoC (akin to decentralized Dropbox).

🧾Blogging dApp https://blogtest.aleph.im/

🪪DID PoC

Foundational Development of the Aleph.im Network

Since 2020, we’ve been able to make significant strides toward a full decentralized cloud computing across the full stack:

Infrastructure

Two main technical milestone:

Dec. 2020: Transitioned hosted storage nodes into the decentralized network with the launch of the Core Channel Nodes network (CCN) for database and file storage.

Since the launch of the core channel node network, community members from all over the world partnered with us to run nodes and dozens of projects from across the blockchain ecosystem have been using the Aleph.im compute stack.

There are 70 of CCNs at time of writing.

Dec. 2021: Launched Compute Resource Nodes network (CRN), a MicroVM system and a second type of node on Aleph.im serving as a decentralized equivalent solution to cloud based serverless computing.

Many of the operators running CCNs chose to operate CRNs and link them to their nodes.

There are 185 CRNs linked to CCN out of 286 CRNs total at time of writing.

2023 Infrastructure milestones:

Long Running VMs on top of the CRNs to provide an equivalent utility to elastic computing offered by centralized cloud providers.
Confidential computing: Currently in Alpha and will be rolled out is part of the CRN network.

Traction and use cases:

Select examples:

Decentralized Open Source Indexer framework

Started in Solana in 2022

Solana has become a popular Blockchain platform for high throughput DeFi applications through 2020 DeFi summer, it’s remarkably good for the write side, however, Solana is notoriously tough on the read side. It was becoming clear there’s a gap that can be addressed by running indexers on Aleph.im and it was great to support teams building on Solana for their data indexing and query needs.

When the codebase for the indexer got to a satisfactory level we celebrated by open sourcing it!

2023 Indexing Milestone:

Expanding the indexer to BSC, Tezos, Ethereum mainnet and other EVM compatible networks. With a first version for Ethereum already undergoing testing.

Digital Identity (DID):

Anima.io provides a digital identity solution by Synaps and it is deployed on Aleph.im

Synaps.io provides a KYC solution deployed on Aleph.im and garnered interest from organizations Ubisoft.

Civic — https://civic.me/ web3 profiles based on Solana and stored on Aleph.im.

Gaming and NFTs

Ubisoft Innovation and Quartz:
We collaborated with Ubisoft and Tezos to create Quartz. Items’ metadata is stored in a secure and flexible way. This brings innovation to game assets:

Ability to track changes to the metadata, as all document amendments are stored in a blockchain and anyone can check the history of the item.
Data availability guaranteed by locking Aleph tokens in the network

Ubisoft Quartz system stores 3 different types of content on the Aleph network:

Archetype definition
NFT transfer history
Owners Ubisoft player names

Campfire:

An Avalanche based NFT exchange chose Aleph.im to be built on.

2023:

Tezos NFTs

Aleph.im is involved in a new Tezos NFTs standard where tokens are embedded into the NFT. More on that to be shared soon.

2023 Ecosystem Roadmap

Network Council formation

A step toward open sourcing the governance of Aleph.im network, a council is being formed of stakeholders representing node operators, core developers, stakers and community activists.

New network economics

The economics of Aleph.im network is a continuous and iterative process, to serve as a cloud compute platform, token utility mechanisms like Pay as you go will be introduced.

Brand revamp

Since the early days of Aleph.im, we’ve actually mostly been hard at work building the cloud compute infrastructure, as the project grew, we realized the importance of brand to the ability to really stand out, the core team is currently workshopping a new and exciting brand styleguided, UX and UI material design for the Aleph.im brand and products.

Closing remarks:

2023 is a promising year for foundational infrastructure offering, the next growth cycle for the decentralized web industry will be far more demanding. Aleph.im will be positioned to enable mass consumer products and propell meaningful commercial activity growth in the cryptoecnomy.

Onward and upward!

About Aleph.im

Aleph.im is a production-ready decentralized computing network providing solutions to companies like Ubisoft, networks like Polygon, Synaps, and Request network. Aleph.im addresses the need for complete cloud computing stack as the digital world transitions to the decentralized web architecture, AKA Web3.

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