Web3 Data and Compute with StackOS and CESS
StackOS hosted a Twitter Space on “Web3 Data and Compute with StackOS and CESS”. The event featured Vishnu Korde, CEO of StackOS, John Humphreys-Ramos, Marketing Manager of CESS Cloud, and Parry Sondhi, Head of Strategic Execution at StackOS.
Introduction to CESS & StackOS:
John provided a brief introduction, explaining that he is originally from El Salvador, one of the first countries to adopt Bitcoin. He joined CESS after the pandemic. CESS has been in stealth mode for more than five years, and it became public about a year and a half ago. They started with Polkadot and did their first collaboration with them. They plan to launch on the mainnet this year and release their token.
Vishnu then introduced himself, stating that he is an engineer by background, a Harvard alumnus and has a patent in Cryogenic engines. He moved to the US 15 years ago. He has spent most of his time in the cloud space, helping build AWS in its early days when the core team was trying to get their product out. After that, he helped most of the Fortune 500 companies get on the AWS cloud.
Six years ago, he started to work on StackOS, which was initially called IDAL (Integro Decentralized Application Layer). Since rebranding to StackOS, they have hit some milestones, such as serving over 120 million application pages over the network, more than 4,000 concurrent applications, and 1,700+ deployments running on StackOS. They went live on the mainnet over a year and a half ago, and their remarkable growth is a testament to their efforts. They were building during the last cycle and worked through the bear market.
The Problem CESS & StackOS are solving for Web3 companies:
John explained that CESS initially came to the spotlight by doing the Polkadot Collaboration and winning the 2021 APAC hackathon. They’ve won a few awards and won three Web3 Foundation grants, which were to build a decentralized substrate pallet of their decentralized storage for the Polkadot ecosystem. The vision of CESS is to create a robust diversified ecosystem, just like Polkadot, not just to benefit CESS but to benefit its users, creators, builders, and all the DApps built using CESS.
Vishnu explained that unlike CESS, which focuses on decentralized storage, StackOS focuses on decentralized compute. StackOS provides servers like AWS, while CESS provides storage, like Dropbox. Most of the data on the blockchain is stored on nodes as a ledger, and all of the ledger data is stored and used on servers. So StackOS is basically the infrastructure that would power all of the world's blockchains along with the Dapps and real-world applications. What is lacking in Web3 is user experience, and for a better user experience, you require better compute that's decentralized. For example, if you want to implement a machine learning model on your DApp, there are no tooling options, and that’s where StackOS is positioning itself as a provider. As DApps mature and scale, they will attract creators to use StackOS’ compute.
Competitors:
John explained that their main competitors in the storage domain are mainly IPFS/Filecoin. They also have a competitor in Arweave, but they focus on permanent storage. IPFS and Filecoin are more on the commercial storage side. The vision for CESS is a complete full-stack storage solution that will scale commercial enterprise. The goal is to provide scalability to decentralized players.
The USP of CESS is that they’re faster, more secure, and cheaper than all their competitors. CESS is not D2C but B2B.
“The architecture is designed not to consist only of consensus and storage miner, but also cash and retrieval miner. The architecture makes it as intuitive as a Web2 solution, and these are enterprise-grade storage solutions. In their testnet, they are faster than IPFS in terms of TPS, and the goal for mainnet is to reach 1000 TPS. They are more secure and reliable because when someone stores their files on other storage protocols, they get one file stored by default. But unlike them, CESS triplicates the files at no extra cost, making sure the data is guaranteed and not tampered. The data in the files are sliced, stored, and scattered on a decentralized storage node network of CESS.
The USP of StackOS is that it’s intuitive, cheaper, and really fast to deploy on it. It’s cheaper because it cuts the cost of DevOps engineers and then it uses economy of scale with multi-tenants. The community is the main selling point for StackOS.
When you build a platform that uses machine learning extensively like Instagram, which suggests followers use machine learning, you require compute. As one graduates from dummy data just sitting on the smart contracts or static websites to a platform like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, which makes use of this data to feed machine learning models, that’s when compute is required. We are on our way to launch GPUs on StackOS. Hundreds of companies are using StackOS for their compute. There are databases running on StackOS, web servers running on StackOS, and AI tools running on StackOS. With StackOS V2, we are working to bring all these Web2 capabilities to Web3 and along with that also bring new use cases and technological capabilities no one has even thought of. It solves big challenges of Web2 using web3.
“It would take hours if I go into use cases of decentralized cloud (DeCloud) and we will run out of time on Twitter spaces,” said Vishnu. Immediately John suggested they should do a podcast, and we would make sure they push them to do it.
Vishnu mentioned he met the Director of Growth at Polygon, Ravikant, and quoted him saying “Projects that want to be globally adopted, need to remove the ‘Web3’ in their pitches and narratives. They are basically creating a barrier to adoption by complicating the narratives. People get scared of these languages. They need to be agnostic of Web3 and start driving value and adding value.”
Future Collaboration of CESS & StackOS
There is so much synergy already between StackOS and CESS, with CESS providing storage services and StackOS providing hosting services in a decentralized way.
Use-cases where companies/protocols are getting the benefits from using CESS & StackOS
“CESS is on testnet,” John mentioned, but there are so many use cases. Let’s start with ownership. With CESS, there is traceability and decentralized data marketplaces. CESS supports IP assets and royalties and, more importantly, how the data is shared to benefit the creators and not harm them. For example, Spotify takes over IP and does not give it to the contributions that are creating value on the platform. CESS has social media and streaming services, and user-generated content platforms where it encourages creators to fully own their data. With CESS, the storage layer is being used for public benefit. They are not looking into your data but rather safeguarding it. Data integrity is important here.
Ecosystem & Communities of CESS and StackOS
John mentioned that CESS has just launched its ambassador's program a month and a half ago, and within the first week, they received over 400 applications. They have almost onboarded everyone and have opened the door for fantastic solutions from these new members. Not only do they have an online ambassadors program, but they also attend offline events, such as the Hong Kong Web3 Festival, and John has secured a keynote speaker slot for the upcoming ‘Polkadot Decoded’ event in Copenhagen. CESS is expanding in Barcelona, Paris, and many other places.
Vishnu from StackOS mentioned that their team is special since almost all hires are from the community itself. They also have a global ambassador program, and people are actively wanting to contribute to StackOS. Their private group community is 650+ people strong. Their community has grown from the US to Europe and now India. StackOS has employees from all over the world, and Vishnu emphasized that they are genuinely decentralized and diverse.
John suggested that CESS and StackOS could collaborate on strategic partnerships for offline Web3 events.
What is the one thing that CESS and StackOS together are trying to achieve in 2023?
With the growing demand for extensive compute for AI-based projects, CESS and StackOS are collaborating to build a complete ecosystem that can provide both storage and machine learning model services. The potential for synergy between the two companies is endless, and they are aiming to provide an alternative to the current Web2 solutions, such as AWS.
Questions from the community, if anyone had any questions?
Q1. What is the main goal for CESS in 2023 besides the mainnet launch?
From an ecosystem and growth perspective, John emphasized that their North Star metric is onboarding the right partners.
Q2. What is the main goal for StackOS in 2023?
StackOS is currently building the StackOS V2, which is in stealth mode. They aim to launch it and solely focus on growth and partnerships once the Polygon Supernets go live.
Q3. How Web3 games could benefit CESS?
John mentioned that scalability is the main goal for GameFI projects, and CESS can provide storage with digital identity, which is a significant benefit for the gaming industry. Many Web3 games run on AWS or other Web2 solutions because there are currently no alternatives in Web3 that can handle data proCESSing at that speed in a decentralized manner.
About StackOS
StackOS ($STACK) is a cross-chain open protocol that allows individuals and organizations to share their computing resources and collectively offers a decentralized cloud; where developers around the world can deploy any full-stack application, decentralized app, blockchain private nets, and main-net nodes.
We aim to provide the world with “The Unstoppable Infrastructure Protocol,” which will allow any person across the world to deploy their application without incurring heavy cloud management costs and freely run any application they wish to run. StackOS furthermore intends to help brick-and-mortar businesses around the globe, to go online cost-effectively and securely with minimal technical overhead.
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About CESS Cloud
Cumulus Encrypted Storage System (CESS) is a decentralized cloud storage network for data storing and sharing, which is high-speed, secure, and scalable. CESS is an open-source public blockchain developed with Substrate, intended to be the underlying network infrastructure for decentralized storage needs. CESS network consists of four layers: blockchain, data storage, content distribution, and application layer. CESS’s R²S consensus mechanism coordinates the network resources and network load, guarantees data security and integrity through proprietary technologies with data ownership protection, technologies such as Proof of Data Reduplication and Recovery (PoDR²), Multi-format Data Rights Confirmation (MDRC), and decentralized proxy re-encryption. CESS aims to be the first decentralized storage network that supports large-scale commercial applications.
CESS is also compatible with EVM and WASM, and the underlying development framework Substrate is also friendly to cross-chain applications. Its technology stack can support most Web3 applications and the development needs of enterprise-level applications.
