Crust provides a decentralized storage network for the Web3 ecosystem, supports multiple storage layer protocols including IPFS, and provides interfaces to the application layer. Crust
's technology stack can also support a decentralized computing layer. Crust aims to build a distributed cloud ecosystem that values data privacy and ownership.
On October 14th (Last Wednesday), the Crust Network team held a regular away-field community meeting "Crust: Filecoin on Polkadot". Crust Network shared with you the decentralized storage of Polkadot's ecology face to face, and led everyone into the block In the world of the chain, experience the value and fun brought by decentralized storage together.
The following is the exciting content of this event.
Moderator:
Today I saw the most talk in my circle of friends about Filecoin. Tomorrow the main net will be online. Regarding Filecoin, in fact, everyone has been looking forward to it for a long time, so today we are discussing Filecoin- Crust on Polkadot. If you are concerned about storage, Crust should be said to be the only storage project comparable to Filecoin. So today we are very fortunate to invite Dean Yan, the product owner of Crust, to share with us.
Hello, say hello to everyone, and briefly introduce yourself and the Crust project.
Crust:
Hello everyone! I’m Dean, the product manager from the Crust team. Crust's project is a network based on the decentralized cloud storage of the Polkadot ecosystem, on the track of distributed cloud storage. It has been almost two years since our project was established, and the mainnet is expected to go live at the end of 2020.
Moderator:
Many of our Lichang users have not been in contact with Crust before, but the friends who are familiar with the storage track should have heard of online or offline sharing of the project recently. Next, we hand over the time to Dean to give us a detailed introduction to Crust's recent progress and some related content of this track.
Crust: The
full name of our project is Crust Network, which is a decentralized storage project. First, we joined the Polkadot ecosystem, and then we obtained the Web3 Foundation Grants Program, and then we joined the Substrate Builders program, which means that we developed based on a framework like Substrate, and the third is that we joined the Web 3.0 bootcamp.
First of all, it can be seen from the above figure that in the six years from 2019 to 2025, the total amount of global cloud market and the total amount of cloud storage data have undergone an earth-shaking change. Compared with 2019, the cloud market capacity has tripled in 2025, and the total amount of global data has doubled by 5 times. Then the most noteworthy place is the data in 2025, where 75% of cloud storage is data on our edge. So what is edge data?
For example: unmanned driving is a trend in the future, like Tesla's unmanned driving premise is that the highway must have a definite route. At present, it is still relatively basic and simple unmanned driving. So how will the future unmanned driving be realized? For example, from my building to the airport, I can completely hand over the whole process to the driverless. There will be a processor in my car, which will continuously collect some data from different places and different levels, such as road condition information, weather information and even previous traffic accident information.
It is difficult for this information to exist in a centralized fixed computer room, because if all the driverless data is stored in the cloud, parking at an intersection must initiate a request to the cloud. Such a large amount of data requests will definitely cause delays. For driving, a one-second delay can have terrible consequences.
Therefore, a concept called edge storage has been proposed on the Internet. That is to say, a lot of data in the future does not need to be stored in the cloud. It may exist at every intersection. When our car passes, we can immediately get all the data around the intersection.
Second, as more and more data is stored on the cloud, we will have more dependence and demand on this cloud. Then more concerns and demands are more focused on data ownership (personal privacy/business privacy), data security and efficient services. The mainstream "centralized" cloud, owned and operated by major businesses, is physically distributed in a limited number of remote locations, and faces huge challenges in terms of data privacy protection and service efficiency. Large amounts of data on the edge, such as medical images, security, etc., are difficult to be uploaded to the cloud in time.
Third, in the context where we have so many needs, our centralized storage is actually facing a challenge. Decentralized distributed cloud, co-built and shared without being monopolized by a single commercial entity, more open and transparent in the technical means of data protection, more physically distributed and close to the user side, more suitable for technological development trends and user needs.
The above figure mainly shows some specific data. These data mainly reflect three aspects. First, we are in an era of data explosion; second, the current cloud service market has been monopolized by the Internet oligopoly; third, compared with the global cloud computing and cloud storage market, the Chinese market will develop Faster.
Next, let’s talk about what we Crust do, what are we and how do we do it?
What we just described is actually the part on the right, which is the blueprint for the future—the application layer of the future. Or the demand side, our demand side may come from the C side (home cloud, on-demand, personal cloud storage, etc.), or it may come from the B side (converged CDN, edge computing, Didi Cloud, disaster recovery, etc.). The demand is very, very much.
The one on the left is actually our current popular mining behavior, which is the provider of cloud resources. So we call it the supply side on the left and the demand side on the right. So what is in the middle? In the middle is what Crust Network will do is called a bridge, which spans the demand side and the supply side.
Crust Network is actually a set of protocols developed by us, it does not belong to anyone, we developed it on the Internet, and then all nodes install this protocol. This set of agreements can motivate our supply side fairly and transparently, dispatch our resources efficiently and reasonably, and finally provide excellent services for our demand layer, that is, the application layer.
Next, let’s talk about how we did it.
First of all, the decentralized storage project must solve three problems: the first is the proof problem, the second is the incentive problem, and the third is the service problem.
The so-called proof problem is that nodes and nodes in decentralized storage do not trust each other. One thing that the proof layer has to do is that each node can prove what kind of service it provides, how much storage it provides, and put its own Storage is quantified as a workload, which can then be proved.
The incentive layer is to provide a verifiable proof for each node based on the entire network, and then provide an incentive for each node.
Finally, there is the service issue. Crust's service layer is based on all our supply sides to provide some smooth interfaces, such as providing some SDKs, storage markets, etc., so that our various applications can use this network relatively easily.
The above figure actually describes the working mechanism of our Crust on a node. The sentence on the left explains that it is our file system, and user data files are stored in these places. We mainly look at the one on the right, which is our proof mechanism-MPOW mechanism. TEE is a core technology on which Crust's MPOW is based. It is a very broad and universal hardware module.
First, let's take a look at what is TEE and how does it work?
The nature of this TEE technology is very similar to the consulate. Some time ago, we should have all heard about the Chinese Consulate in Boston. The US consulate was closed for a limited time. The Chinese consulate was burning some materials, which was exposed by the media.
What information was revealed by the consulate incident: First, the administrative power of this Chinese consulate in the United States does not belong to the United States, that is, you can only watch me burn the data but cannot rush in to stop it. Second, everyone can see it. What the consulate does, thirdly, everyone can know what I’m doing, but they don’t know the specific content of the information.
These three points correspond to our TEE technology: TEE is like our class protocol assigning a consulate to each node, which is to open up a space like TEE for your node to receive from the block network The ambassador group, and the node has no way to interfere with anything my ambassador group does on your computer, but the node can verify what the ambassador group is doing, and at the same time the node cannot see what the data in you is. This is our TEE technology.
Based on TEE technology, how do we prove the workload of the node? It is also very simple, that is, after our ambassador group has settled in the TEE of the node, it will continuously verify the data files we store locally, and periodically generate a signature (indicating that there are indeed XX files) uploaded to the chain In this way, the entire network knows what files each node transmits.
This page is about our incentive layer.
The incentive layer uses the Guaranteed Proof of Stake consensus, which itself is a POS, which means that it is obtained through this staking. So what is the difference between it and traditional staking? He gave a Guaranteed (guarantee), this guarantee mainly comes from the storage capacity of the node. By calculating the storage capacity of each file, our network can calculate a staking limit, which is a storage upper limit. The higher the storage capacity, the higher the upper limit. The higher your upper limit, the more coins that others can guarantee you, so it is not enough for you to have coins in our model.
In our place, in addition to tokens, you also have to have a high limit. At the same time, in our network, your limit (high storage capacity) is not enough. It is useless if you do evil. , Because no one throws coins for you, our network is more secure than POS and more economical than arms race. That's all for Crust's network introduction, thank you!
Moderator:
Thank you for sharing! Dean gave us a detailed introduction to the macro-level situation of the entire storage direction, as well as the micro-level of Crust, including the basic incentive layer, proof mechanism and other detailed content, full of dry goods. Both are distributed storage. What is the difference between Crust and Filecoin, and the Ethereum project Storj? Can you give some reasons to choose Crust (that is, where Crust's advantage lies)?
Crust:
On the track of distributed storage, I first categorize them into three categories simply and roughly.
The first category: networks based on trust in super nodes, including YotaChain, MW, Lambda, Storj, etc.; there will be a kind of super nodes in this network, and all nodes have to trust these super nodes.
The second category: Filecoin and Crust. In this way, there is no trust and there is no network of super nodes; the fundamental difference from the first category is that there is no trust between nodes, and there is no super node in the entire network.
The third category: like Arweave, a new form of storage. Its storage room is non-order mode. Its main focus is permanent storage, and its incentive model is also very different.
Then in the second category of networks, compared with Filecoin, Crust's advantages are mainly reflected in three aspects: cost saving, technical maturity, and landing.
The first cost issue. In our network, first, our nodes do not have additional hardware configuration, and only need to support TEE. The TEE itself is a very common CPU module. So our hardware cost is very low. Filecoin is based on a very complex cryptographic algorithm, which is a very pure mathematical method to solve it. This will introduce certain problems, for example, mining nodes must use GPU, which is very costly.
The second issue of technological maturity. We develop based on substrate, because substrate is a very powerful framework launched by Polkadot. Many concepts, technologies and algorithms in it are very mature. This makes us very strong and mature in block verification and proof mechanisms. And Filecoin's proof algorithm has been constantly changing and iterating, so our maturity is still relatively high.
The third piece is landing. For example, in terms of storage certification, Filecoin's packaging is once every 32G, which takes more than two hours. And Crust's sealing is based on the TEE hardware encapsulation, which only takes 2 seconds, so we are more practical. At the same time, substrate has a very powerful black technology called: on-chain governance and no-branch upgrades. This means that our protocol can be upgraded, which is very friendly to the applications that carry our chain.
Moderator:
Crust Network, a distributed cloud project based on Polkadot's parachain, is the current progress of the project, what products are there yet, and how is the market application?
Crust:
First of all, Crust will enter the incentive testnet stage in November this year, and the mainnet is expected to be launched by the end of this year. This is similar to Filecoin's space race, which encourages miners to test the performance of our network and verify our concepts and algorithms. Parallel to the award-winning testnet is the Crust Cloud internal testing activity developed by us.
Crust Cloud is a personal cloud storage application based on the Crust network developed by our team. You can participate in our testnet as a node or as a storage user to play with our Crust Cloud cloud storage.
Regarding the progress of Crust, after our mainnet is launched, we will directly provide related services for many contract applications on Polkadot.
Moderator:
What role does Crust play in the Polkadot ecology and what impact will it have on the Polkadot ecology? If it becomes a Polkadot parachain, what are the main technical and commercial values?
Crust:
Polkadot's symbol is cross-chain. The essence of cross-chain is to bring together many different projects focused on their own fields to form a 1+1>2 effect. A complete technical framework is defined in the Web3.0 agreement. Crust can fill in the gaps in large file storage, file distribution, and private data storage in this technology stack.
If Crust becomes a Polkadot parachain, then projects in the Polkadot ecosystem that need to use storage can easily use the Crust network to enjoy efficient and reliable decentralized storage services.
Currently, the MaskBook of Polkadot Ecosystem, Darwinia has reached a cooperation agreement with Crust. Crust will launch a Crust SDK after the mainnet goes live at the end of the year. Any developer can use this SDK to develop storage modules for their own businesses and applications.
At the same time, some projects outside the ecosystem, and even some Internet platforms outside the chain, have also expressed interest in Crust and will participate in the Crust SDK test. We will announce the details after the official cooperation begins.
About Crust Network
Crust provides a decentralized storage network for the Web3 ecosystem, supports multiple storage layer protocols including IPFS, and provides interfaces to the application layer. Crust's technology stack can also support a decentralized computing layer. Crust aims to build a distributed cloud ecosystem that values data privacy and ownership.
The public testnet Maxwell CC2 is currently online, and you are welcome to join the test experience. Crust Network has successively joined the Substrate Builders Program, Web3.0 Bootcamp, and obtained the Grant from the Web3 Foundation.
Crust related:
Crust Technical White Paper v1.9.3
Crust Network Economic White Paper v.0.7
Crust Network Token Indicators & Economics
Quickly understand the Crust Network distributed cloud
官网：https://crust.network/
Twitter：@CrustNetwork
Medium：https://medium.com/@crustnetwork
GitHub：https://github.com/crustio
Telegram：https://t.me/CrustNetwork
