ColdStack Biweekly Update Report #3 (June 14th — June 28th)
Dear community members, we are happy to present our latest biweekly report. We’ve certainly accomplished a great amount from a platform-development perspective in the past two weeks, and would like to take some time to reflect upon these achievements. We’d also like to give our community some previews of developments that we plan to implement in the future.
Round One of DSN Integrations Completed
Perhaps our most significant achievements over the past two weeks surround our integration of several decentralized storage networks (DSNs). After many rounds of rigorous testing, we completed and announced our integration of notable DSNs such as Sia, Arweave, Lambda, Crust, and Filecoin. These five networks provide an excellent base for ColdStack to begin offering comprehensive storage solutions to individuals and projects, and will allow us to build out our services in an easily scalable fashion. Our next round of DSN integrations will involve networks such as BitTorrent’s BTFS, 0chain, and Storj. However, we will likely hold off on fully implementing these integrations until after our MVP is released. So while there will not be much delay in this regard, we’d like to be straightforward in regards to our development strategy as to not leave anyone waiting in anticipation for too long.
Formal Collaboration With Arweave
ColdStack has also recently unveiled our formal collaboration with the Arweave team. Arweave is one of the leaders in decentralized storage, and this partnership provides a great deal of strength to our project. Being able to collaborate with the experienced team over at Arweave and being able to access their expertise will undoubtedly help ColdStack expand, and ensure that our integration of the Arweave platform continues to be successful. Our integration of Arweave means the Arweave platform is accessible through an S3 protocol for the first time, and we’re very happy to increase accessibility to the Arweave network and the many advantages it offers.
We at ColdStack had an excellent time interacting with the Arweave team, and we cannot stress enough how thankful we are for how accessible they’ve made themselves. Our community can rest easy knowing that ColdStack does not simply look to integrate DSNs, we seek to formally work with them in order to guarantee the sustainability of our platform. We actually want to unite the decentralized storage ecosystem, and this will involve extensive collaborative efforts.
Deployment of Billing Infrastructure
As you may have noticed in our live demo, our current product simply shows users an overview of how our storage process works. An individual simply uploads a file, signs for the transaction in their wallet, and they can verify that their data is securely uploaded. However, this demo is missing a very critical part of the process, in that it does not charge users for the files uploaded (apart from the issued testnet tokens). Obviously, our billing infrastructure is a critical part of our development, as it allows us to begin offering our storage solution services to both individuals and blockchain projects. As we begin to deploy this infrastructure, be on the lookout for DeFi or commercial partnerships that may arise through early adoption! We plan to both further develop and deploy this billing infrastructure during the coming weeks, and will provide technical updates on our progress as well.
Planned Release of Alpha Testing
As we deploy our billing infrastructure in earnest, we will be putting ourselves in a position in which we can begin to open up our alpha test to the public. During this testing phase, members of the community will be allowed to participate in our storage ecosystem through the storage, billing, and retrieval of data. Users will also be able to interact with an all-new dashboard, and view planned features such as our cross-chain capabilities. The ability to interact with your files will also be expanded, most notably with features enabling users to delete both files and buckets. The deletion of files and buckets which are no longer needed will stop the monthly billing cycle for storing this data, and reduce the cost of operations for users.
As this stage of testing involves billing, members of the community should only join if they intend to purchase storage space with us in the future. Those wishing to apply in order to participate in our alpha testing can do so simply by contacting our team via Telegram, though we likely not be able to permit entry to all applicants. Please note that those participating in alpha testing will not be awarded $CLS tokens, or receive any direct financial compensation. However, we will be providing discounts on our purchased storage space for early adopters, so those looking to utilize our platform in a serious manner are encouraged to apply. This will allow us to begin exploring extensive DeFi and commercial-use storage partnerships, and begin to gauge the demand for our services.
UX/UI Upgrades
As we mentioned while outlining our alpha test, ColdStack will be undergoing a UX/UI overhaul, with a focus on our storage solution dashboard. While the final design is subject to change, we wanted to give our faithful community the opportunity to preview these design upgrades. We felt even those who may not have the opportunity to participate in our alpha test still deserve to have as much information regarding the development of our platform as possible, and even design upgrades are an essential part of the growth of our platform. We want our interface to not only be easy to use and accessible for everyone, we want our interface to be something that is pleasing to the eye and enjoyable to interact with. And of course, our design is a critical component of attracting attention. While ColdStack is definitely a project that you should be mainly interested in “for the tech”, we like to show our supporters that we certainly have factors such as marketability in mind.
Here’s a preview of our new UX/UI:
Stay Tuned!
ColdStack is a complex project, and sometimes it isn’t easy to keep up. Decentralized storage generally does not get the same level of attention that other projects within the cryptocurrency ecosystem garner, despite the serious real life use-case it provides, even for those outside of blockchain. We’d like to thank our community for continuing to educate themselves regarding both the ColdStack project, and the greater decentralized storage ecosystem. Together, we’re confident that we’ll be able to provide decentralized storage the means to properly compete with centralized services. Make sure you follow ColdStack with the links below, as we continue to grow our platform’s capabilities.
Follow ColdStack:
Official website: https://coldstack.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/coldstack_io
Telegram: https://t.me/coldstackio
Medium: https://medium.com/coldstack
