As of this writing, SINSO Getway has built to its Testnet thousands of nodes, distributed in more than 10 countries around the world, and SINSO Getway API has just been released. As a real access interface, the just-released API enables developers to test the file access function of SINSO Getway. Yet file access only accounts for part of what SINSO Getway can do, it is high time to elaborate on the value of SINSO Getway and its development strategy that we designed.
Distributed Cache Network
Though most DApp builders have no idea of a "distributed cache network", in practice, comparable pre-storage networks have been built to improve user experience in DApps. The most relevant concept is “Edge Storage”, which plays an important role in application architecture. As crucial support for Edge Computing, Edge Storage is to enhance the effectiveness of centralized storage. For example, to build a global e-commerce network, you need to build "Edge Storage" networks in each country for local data access. Without such an architecture, centralized storage would be overwhelmed -- Whether the ultimate storage destination is AWS or Filecoin, this problem will surface.
The biggest difference between SINSO Getway and "Edge Storage" is that SINSO Getway adopts a distributed crowdsource network rather than a centralized architecture; for the goal of building DApps, it focuses on the Decentralization of data storage, low-cost, easy-to-use, and enables end-users to build a secure decentralized channel.
At present, most DApps are built based on private IPFS nodes or centralized storage -- a high-cost way out with low security. In contrast, the data query method adopted by Filecoin and SINSO Getway is content addressing -- a proof of the natural fit between SINSO Getway and Filecoin. While Filecoin sets as its mission to "store humanity's most important information," SINSO Getway acts before data is stored into Filecoin by processing or sifting data -- flexibly identifying which information is to be persistently stored. What SINSO Getway creates for DApps is more about immersive access, and cached data will be released after a certain period of time to ensure the network’s maximum reuse value without a heavy storage burden.
With outstanding value in the field of Metaverse and NFT, SINSO Getway will build consistent Decentralization in the storage pipeline. It can receive web storage systems, such as AWS. For cost-sensitive users, it also holds a very strong attraction. According to the demand of the industrial IoT, some regulations prohibit industrial data to pass to other companies or external cloud computing architecture. Privatized Edge Networks have been driving up construction costs. In comparison, SINSO Getway, with great DDoS defense, can keep the cost low while also taking care of data ownership, providing an excellent alternative for UAV flight data networks, medical and health data, etc.
In essence, SINSO Getway is not an upgraded version of "Edge Storage", but an important decentralization-oriented infrastructure of Web3.0.
The Incentive Model of Donors Network
Filecoin has entered a critical phase of construction and development, but it is still not very user-friendly for DApp builders. To improve the developer experience, Filecoin and its partners have developed NFT. Storage and Web3.storage, which have gained a large number of users. Yet these two projects only dealt with the early stages of experience and testing, and did not address subsequent issues, such as storage charge and sustainable service. SINSO Getway wants to build a more durable crowdsourcing network with an incentive model to maintain the operation of Filecoin Layer2.
If we understand Filecoin as a giant data processing plant, then SINSO Getway is the highway and logistics system leading to it. Resources are needed for the construction, as well as the constant maintenance and improvement of these logistics systems. “There is no such thing as a free lunch” -- Solutions cannot always come out of lasting open-source contributions. Without a business model, we will see much open-source middleware end silently, either due to lack of service support or slow development.
Filecoin has become one of the world’s most attractive Web3.0 infrastructures. Developers and the projects are looking for a convenient infrastructure to access Web3.0 DApps, and SINSO is one of them. Yet differing from many other open-source projects, SINSO has paid special attention to combining infrastructure and incentives, which has been a key idea since the initial development phase.
We feel it necessary to clarify here the original intention and positioning of SINSO Getway. For common understanding, it is a right and proper thing for users to pay. But in the process of constructing DApps, it turns out to be more complex than we expect. The true end-users may be individual customers or businesses that have storage needs. When facing them, it is hard to charge them directly. In the real storage market, we can see that it would be difficult to bill for storage services if you can't sort out your own requirements. Pricing is affected not only by storage size, but also by duration, fragmentation (number of copies) and efficiency requirements (online, archiving, etc.). For this reason, we need a more flexible architecture to adapt to the needs of users. NFT. Storage and Web3.storage are free, but that doesn't mean you can demand unlimited resources from them. There will always be an upper limit to storage quotas, and in the Web3.0 world, it would be rather disconcerting to have a completely free space in front of us that doesn't cost us anything in return.
Additionally, NFT.Storage claims that "NFT.Storage will increasingly decentralize itself as a public good!" This means that it is not decentralized enough. The storage providers behind NFT. Storage provide their own managed IPFS nodes. We understand that they are generous caching providers, which is a good expedient. But how shall we design our storage architecture? By contrast, SINSO Getway lets node miners build our network infrastructure -- not for free, of course. And we have our incentive model.
As a preview, we’ll introduce here the inspiration for our incentive model, namely, a Donor Network. In this concept, the Storage Resources open to users are to be provided by a third-party Donor. Instead of burning his/her own tokens as GAS, the Donor needs to simply stake tokens to a "Resource Account" to apply for storage, bandwidth, etc. Seems strange? But it fits very well with the world we live in today. We know that there's a huge imbalance of resources, where a lot of people need all kinds of services, but some people have a huge surplus of resources. We want someone (Donor) to help developers and users by pledging his/her tokens for storage and computing resources. The resources can then feedback to Donors as they grow in value. In this way, we have a more refined collaboration in the calculation, storage, and utilization of data resources.
To give a better illustration, let’s assume a plot where user A has storage and computing resources, but no research or data operations capabilities, while for user B, the reverse applies. Though in the real world it's hard for these two people to cooperate, using the Donor Network, they can. Like a bond, the Donor Network connects A and B with a reasonable division of labor so that they can collaboratively run SINSO Getway. Thanks to the fact that SINSO Getway uses content addressing to store files, we can define the owner of CID in the contract. The person who uses the storage resource in this way is not necessarily the Content Owner.
We can continue to refine the figure above.
The Resource Consumer is simply a Data Operator. If they are not the end-user -- like a business that is managing data of individuals, they need to define the end-user as the data owner. In the real world, the confusion of rights and responsibilities between consumers and data owners often leads to the failure to give full play to the application value and role of data. We separate the roles using the SINSO Getway component in the Donors Network, so that the participants in cooperation were demarcated.
When you get to this point, you might think that SINSO Getway complicates the process of data usage. But it’s not true. We're just fine-tuning the roles to get more people involved in data governance. Donors have neither the right to operate nor the right to own data. The realization of such separation and governance of data should give credit to content addressing and smart contracts, which have made data governance more efficient and flexible than ever before. The most immediate benefit for a Donor is the rewards for building valid data resources, which have a positive proportion with the valid data stored into the Filecoin ecosystem owing to the interface provided by the Donor for valid data to access storage resources. The Donor will gain corresponding Staking rewards based on the size of the resource pool provided and the actually stored valid data.
How to understand SINSO Getway's gas-free consumption mode? In short, Donors do not need to consume their SINSO tokens, but instead only need to stake tokens to a Resource Account, allowing Data Operators to use the resources of the SINSO network for storage and computation. SINSO Getway has simplified Filecoin's future storage transactions. If there are clients involved, who are the real clients? The Payer is not necessarily the real Data Owner, which has a great ambiguity. In fact, the application of data resources is much more complex than financial assets. Data is like raw materials at times. But in certain circumstances, it is like gold. And over time and update, the value of data changes. Unlike financial assets, data assets are not easily anchored in value, and their value is often reflected in the process of use (not if they are not shared or in mobility) or reflected only in cluster effects. The value of data clustering effects increases exponentially, but when the data is disaggregated, their value becomes very low.
The biggest problem facing the world today is that the platform economy has monopolized data and small platforms are in a state of conflict. SINSO Getway needs to establish a new data governance paradigm. For example, SINSO Getway is pretty in line with the current economic trend of "creating private domain traffic", not just positioned as the logistics pipeline to Filecoin.
Data Protocol Stack Nodes
The SINSO Economics Whitepaper states that "SINSO Getway bound to valid data protocol stack nodes will be rewarded at β times - β refers to its weighting coefficient, which will be determined by the SINSO DAC voting governance. This means that SINSO Getway Distributed Cache Nodes will play a critical role in actual production.” SINSO DAC is an important component to be used by SINSO Getway next or to say SINSO Getway will be included in the governance framework of SINSO DAC -- which will be introduced in the next chapter. To ensure that the data sources collected by SINSO Getway are valid, we take measures from two aspects:
1. Adopt the whitelist system for ecological projects, supplemented by KYC for registration verification. KYC relies on third-party tools, and the primary KYC target is the actual Data Operators. This requires some manual review, which will be performed by SINSO DAC when its governance framework is mature.
2. Binding of valid data protocol stack nodes. SINSO Getway data stack nodes are for landing high-quality ecological projects, rather than blindly expanding the base miners. We see a lot of negative examples of eco-projects where miners build much faster than developer communities. Building networks and storage resources are easy, but research and development are certainly difficult. To balance this relationship, economic models should encourage contributors to effective data and give special rewards. Certified and registered valid data protocol stack nodes will have some automatic data parsing and data format discrimination capabilities. This is a very large blueprint that has to be motivated by crowdsourcing networks, and it’s not just a task for SINSO’s founding team. We can continue to enrich our previous figure.
A data protocol stack can be understood as a service component. Once the Data Operator invokes this component, it will bring comprehensive doubled benefits to all participating roles. Miners, Data Protocol Stack Creators, Donors, Data Operators, and End Users of data protocol stack nodes will all get more benefits. SINSO Getway essentially encourages data ordering, hence the concept of a data protocol stack has arisen. For example, the verification and online playback of the MP3 file protocol for music will be done by the data protocol stack node. In the case of high scarcity, the maximum yield can be close to 5 times. Capable Data Operators want to join the community of creators of the data protocol stack, which will reap very high benefits in data governance.
Although all roads lead to Rome, SINSO has a unique understanding and approach to data governance. These schemes are the result of continuing efforts based on the successes and failures of storage projects over the years. The positioning of SINSO is completely different from that of Filecoin, but the two don't conflict at all. We are to maximize the functions of Filecoin through our instrument of data governance and usage. To much extent, SINSO Getway acts as a pre-incentive network for Filecoin. The market-oriented thinking applied in our design ensures the durability of the organization mode. When in a certain context, we would want to clarify the various roles in the Web3 application ecosystem. In the actual development and practice, the either-or way of thinking should not dominate thoughts. Instead, we shall always consider the complexity of the application ecosystem.
In the next article, we will analyze the specific application scenarios of SINSO Getway through a case study.
Apply for SINSO Getway API: https://getway.sinso.io/apply
