Jonathan Schemoul building decentralized cloud storage

0:00i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media in the Crypto Coin Show and today on blockchain interviews with jonathan sheamul ceo of aleph.im jonathan welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time to come on really happy to like come here thank you for inviting me you're very welcome i'm excited to dive into lf and cloud

0:24storage databases on the blockchain the future as we both know and i would love for you to kick us off explaining a little bit about lf and the blockchain solutions that your team is providing because for people that are just getting into crypto it's not as easy as as one two three but it is needed i think as we continue to grow out the web so let's

0:47kick off our conversation with just a high level overview of lf.iam to start and then we'll dive into the details yeah perfect so as you just said it's really needed because most of the solutions that we see out there some of them still have centralized parts we have seen a few cases where defy wasn't really decentralized and that's where we come in

1:13we provide decentralized storage storage as in file storage which is really important for the front end on like for assets and things like that but also we like also provided that we also provide a decentralized database because if you look at websites most of the websites are just that databases so if you want to make a social network or whatever you need a database if you want

1:40to like store user data profiles etc you need a database and then on top of that we are also providing computing not as in as in cpu intensive tasks like a few other projects are doing more like on-demand computing a bit like amazon lambda for those more in the know it's like micro virtual machine when you need a resource you call it

2:07from the network it will find a server that will run your request run it and get your result back on for on like thanks to that we did some indexing on solana and a few other blockchains and we can also decentralize the back end of any defy application that still has centralized parts the electrosm project is not a blockchain it's a peer-to-peer network that talks languages of

2:34blockchains accept message is signed by by your wallet beat metamask on ethereum phantom on solana or like whatever over some polka dot cosmos etc and then we will we will go and read and write data on the blockchain as needed very cool thanks for that intro jonathan and i'm trying to piece together you know from a newbie perspective into

3:02cryptocurrency you mentioned there file storage but you also mentioned cloud computing and what i think is you know like sort of like a dropbox in terms of file storage except for dropbox could delete your files or delete your account in a in a centralized way and amazon for like hosting or storing your website or database of the files of your

3:23website you know and if you have a social media platform that says the wrong thing then amazon could could delete your website completely is and so is that correct that you know those two areas are what you're focusing on and trying to bring the principles of decentralization or peer-to-peer networks into those to help stop any issues yeah into those but not only we are

3:50also helping applications that are seen as decentralized but that aren't really decentralized if you if the app that you are using has only one front and us by them and that front end uses a back-end for database indexing and things like that and it's not only interacting with smart contracts but also with the server then you are at risk because if that

4:15if that the app decides that you are in a country that they don't want to serve then you are out of luck because you won't be even be able to just use their smart contract you would need their front end and back end etc so what we are offering is to decentralize it and it's sorry it's a win-win situation even for the app developers because then they

4:35don't need to care about who they are servicing in what country etc and then and then they just put it on a decentralized network on the if there are servers that are in location that accepts you okay if not then over server can just take on and service you incredible and yeah it's definitely a turning point i'm seeing that more people are looking for alternative

5:00solutions to be able to control their own assets and not have somebody say who can or cannot use their platform but i feel like the amount of companies and databases that are decentralized are so small compared to the entire internet that's still running on amazon and web 2. can you talk about where you see the industry as a whole at this point

5:25into moving into decentralization and you know the need for it well we have worked with ubisoft lately as some people might know we are we are in their incubation program which is the ubisoft entrepreneur labs into the last session of 2021 we have worked with them in a lot of areas and we have seen also over

5:52big corporation who has who are getting in interested by decentralization and well it starts with nft start with areas which are easily made into decentralization but then it gets more deep because they all have a lot of servers that they aren't using or that they are keeping because they need to have servers on home especially with the with the shortage

6:22in chips and things like that lately so they have a lot of server they don't want to lose money with it so they could put it on to decentralized network and then when they have surged of requests or computing of storage that they can't provide with their own infrastructure they would like to be able to like to like outsource it whenever it's needed to a decentralized

6:44network which is not which is not controlled by a single company in another country so i think that it's quite interesting for a lot of multinationals so we will go into that way and not only from the very little crypto specific area i think that the whole world is moving towards it and it's something that will get a lot of people by a bit of surprise

7:09it won't only be money it will be all the big companies all the big computing storage consumers that are moving to the decentralized networks definitely and how long has your team been working on this platform now and are you seeing an increase in growth and adoption of this kind of technology well we started in 2019

7:36it's been quite a long road since then start from start of 2019 towards no at start we were like totally self-funded i was the only one working full-time and then other members of my team who were working as as open source contributors joined full-time and then we got funding we just raised a 10 million dollar round lately

8:05we are seeing a lot of growth we are working with more and more companies and projects in the solar ecosystem alone we are working with more than 20 projects at the moment we are working with companies like ubisoft on the fields as well we will really soon decentralize identity framework with our partner snaps there is quite a lot of other areas so

8:32there is a lot of traction it's a really i think that it's not really beginner proof it's hard to grasp where where the decentralized computing and storage world is going but i think that it's that it's like an essential cornerstone of decentralization on an essential cornerstone of the of the web in

8:59in a few years and we are working towards it right now definitely no i think it's a huge cornerstone and it's essentially the entire infrastructure of how websites are are on are on the web far on the web right and i think that's going to change but under the hood regular users don't necessarily need to understand the difference is they just need to

9:23understand the benefits of the innovation you know because it does get very technical especially you know even just trying to explain amazon web services to people you know you need to go through like a year-long course just to explain how to host a website so i can imagine the decentralized version is even more complex yeah it is quite complex

9:46and not necessarily needed to be 100 understood by the everyday user that's visiting the websites but as long as they understand the benefits of the peer-to-peer network and there definitely are benefits but one thing i know cryptocurrency users understand is crypto coins themselves and i'd love to touch on how that functions inside of lf as well i know

10:10that there is an lf token and maybe you can explain a little bit on how the token and how cryptocurrencies function within the ecosystem and do they provide value to everyone in the ecosystem well the way that our network works is that we have different kind of nodes we have the core channel nodes which are the controllers of the network who are validating that

10:37resource providers are really doing their job and they are also validating that messages have indeed been signed by a private key that they come from a specific blockchain etc and these nodes need to have skin in the game so they need a deposit and they also need stakers to come and say okay this node is worth to be start starting he's secure etc and then

11:03they entrust it by staking aleph tokens on it on unlike once it has enough it can't start on them those nodes also have another task which is interesting resource nodes which which are those that are really doing their job on those that are doing the job for example the computing resource nodes that we just started last month they are akin to like to like to

11:35electric to like amazon london runners they are those that are running the micro vehicle machine that are running code they have what we call a minimum wage minimum wage means that as long as the as the server is like launched they get paid on the on the core channel node they can appoint a specific number of computing resource node to work on get this minimum

12:03wage so on then on the on the demand side there is two ways to pay for service one which is live today which is the holder tier where you hold alif tokens on your get service be it storage or computing and there is one that we will start later this year which is the pay as you go which is akin to like cloud computing credits that you would buy

12:33And then you consume a life credit well while you are getting service so basically it's it's the currency of the network it's a currency that allows you to get computing and storage on the network if you want to like backup your nft store your files pay for computing you need alif tokens interesting interesting and what you mentioned with the nfts there i

13:01think a lot of people don't think they think oh just websites but if there's personal storage or whatever you can also host your nfts now you mentioned you're working on pay as you go you also mentioned that you your team just raised another round of capital i'm curious looking forward with that capital in the bag what are the main goals throughout 2022

13:26that lf is looking to try and accomplish to lower the barriers to entry to get more people using peer-to-peer cloud storage and you know to bring web 2 to web3 well we have the decentralized identity that is coming in a few months with our partner synapse this is quite a big step for us because it will allow you to like link your identity to your

13:55decentralized cloud identity which can then be used for a lot of actions on chain and of chain and then we might see social networks built on the left.im infrastructure all these linked with newer wallets which are more user-friendly could get you a great ecosystem and you could even go into centralized finance or like or like or

14:25like exchanges and just log in with your lf account on getting because you already did your cow ac once they reuse it and only share what you want with that exchange for example and then and then our goal is to decentralize as much as we can for the world web free stack we don't want to see same centralized services anymore so we are trying to get all of them on board

14:52and what we did for solana which is indexing of the solana blockchain gets us a foot in the door there and then projects can see that they can decentralize part of the part of their stack and then they can decentralize the rest and we will go and do the same on ethereum polygon near teslas on a lot of our blockchains as well i'm glad that you mentioned the

15:17decentralized identity there as well and i think that's a huge something that is holding us back right now you know i don't want to log in with google or log in with facebook and then and then all of a sudden your facebook is deleted or banned and all of your accounts are disappeared or even just having to go to you know each website and platform in exchange and

15:39make different account and then do kyc again and again and again when you could be logging in with a web3 login that also protects your information keeps it on the blockchain so definitely looking forward to that jonathan thank you for that information and for the viewers and for people that want to learn more about decentralized cloud storage and peer-to-peer networks

16:00and maybe they want to start hosting on web3 what is the best way for them to learn more and to get involved well we have a website i live that i am we like all so have a twitter account we are very present on telegram as well so like they can they can join our telegram groups if they are developers we will redirect them to like developer specific groups

16:27and give them support we also have a developer landing page that has a lot of information and there is a few youtubers who did a few youtube series on life if they prefer to like learn that way very cool thank you so much jonathan i will leave those links as well to the website and to the social networks in the description box below all the best with everything web3 moving forward i'm

16:52looking forward to logging in with your decentralized identity in the future and let's definitely follow up in the near future so thank you so much great thank you thank you very much as well