The biggest difference between Web3 and Web2 is: Web3 is a decentralized network, any behavior of users will not need an intermediary agency to help transfer, and information, data, and assets are no longer controlled by some centralized nodes. Master, and the reason why the "decentralization" of Web3 can be realized is that the Internet operation structure behind it has undergone a complete change.
The technical cornerstone of Web3 is blockchain. By building a decentralized consensus network, blockchain technology makes it impossible for any core network participant to control the data and protocols on the network alone. The popularity and development of this technology has already The way thousands of organizations and businesses do business and operate has been changed, and blockchain infrastructure is a key enabler of such changes.
Blockchain technology is limited by performance, and computing and storage capabilities are limited, which requires some decentralized infrastructure built around network resources (storage, computing, transmission, etc.) to facilitate the realization of Web3 . Therefore, it can be said that the decentralized network infrastructure is also an important cornerstone of Web3, and we need to establish a distributed, trustless and authorization-free Web3 infrastructure.
What is the infrastructure of Web3?
Infrastructure is the cornerstone of development. Whether it is Web2 or Web3, behind the easy-to-use Internet is a large amount of infrastructure, which is responsible for website hosting, data storage and delivery, etc. However, as mentioned above, the Internet operation structure of Web3 has undergone a complete change.
For Web3, we now define infrastructure as the tools, services, and architectures that allow Web3 applications to be deployed, built, and used at scale . Within the realm of decentralization, Web3 infrastructure comes in many forms, and it is often synonymous with a wide range of products and services, covering everything from smart contract auditing to cross-chain bridging.
Web3 researchers Rahul Maganti and Saurabh Sharma point out that we can define the “ecosystem” of blockchain infrastructure as the protocols designed to support the development of L1 and L2 in the following key areas:
- Layer-0 infrastructure : (1) decentralized cloud services (storage, computing, indexing); (2) node infrastructure (RPC, Staking / Validators);
- Middleware : (1) data availability; (2) communication/message protocol;
- Blockchain development : (1) security and testing; (2) developer tools (out-of-the-box tools, frontend/backend libraries, languages/IDEs).
And 
tech investor Eric Hu proposes in his research that the foundation of Web3 is the computing layer, which includes blockchain and blockchain-inspired networks (L1, subnetworks/sidechains, and scaling solutions), and everything else built on top of it. On top of the base blockchain layer, we can divide services, tools, architecture, and infrastructure into three parts:
- Data infrastructure : provide the core infrastructure, architecture and tools for the team to build and operate the Web3 project;
- Value and Liquidity Participants : The cornerstone for capital to flow between Web3 applications and participants with less friction;
- "Interactors" or blockchain supporting infrastructure : Stakeholders who support and maintain the blockchain/computing network.
As an infrastructure, blockchain infrastructure services provide users with special services such as nodes, APIs, network development tools, monitoring and alarming, effectively helping developers and business users connect to the blockchain and reconfigure the infrastructure.
Among them, cloud services have provided large-scale, highly available, and scalable computing and storage resources for enterprises in a more convenient and economical way in the Web2 era, and have long become one of the best ways to realize digital transformation of enterprises .
Undoubtedly, Web3 applications have the same demand for data and computing, so what should the decentralized cloud services that Web3 need to build be like?
What role does the decentralized cloud Phala play?
The development of cloud services is in full swing, but most of them are currently regarded as "centralized" cloud services by default, that is, centralized and unified remote cluster computing or storage. However, the dependence on cloud infrastructure does not significantly reduce its weaknesses, but highlights them. Disadvantages of centralized cloud services , such as data privacy and security, downtime, waste of resources, environmental pollution, etc.
The decentralized cloud service will achieve more efficient, sustainable and secure data processing and storage by using more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and trustless technologies. Overall, a decentralized cloud should have 3 core components:
- Storage : Data/files are stored on servers run by many entities. These networks are highly fault-tolerant because data is replicated across multiple machines;
- Compute : Like storage, compute is central to the Web2 paradigm. Decentralized computing involves distributing this computation across multiple nodes to achieve a higher degree of fault tolerance (if one or a group of nodes fails, the network can still serve requests with minimal disruption to performance);
- Indexing : In the Web2 world, data is already stored on a server or set of servers owned and operated by a single entity, and it is relatively easy to query this data. Because blockchain nodes are distributed, data can be siled and scattered across regions, often under incompatible standards. Indexing protocols aggregate this data and provide an easy-to-use and standardized API to access it.
Among the blockchain infrastructure providers, there are different projects that provide the above three services or combined services, and Phala Network is a leader in decentralized cloud computing.
On its official website, Phala describes its vision as "becoming the world's largest P2P computing network, a standard Web3-based decentralized computing cloud" , compared with centralized solutions such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform , De-trusting is not only the first feature of Phala recognized by the community, but also the cornerstone of Phala becoming a reliable distributed computing network. So what advantages does Phala have, and how is it achieved?
What are the advantages of Phala and how to realize it?
Although Web3 advocates decentralization, due to factors such as low execution efficiency, high cost, and difficulty in expansion, there are still many DeFi, Metaverse, and Web3 games that have to integrate front-end, back-end, and data storage while using smart contracts. Deployed on centralized servers such as AWS and Google Cloud, this brings system-level vulnerability and data security issues to Web3 applications.
And Phala aims to solve these problems. When we talk about the "decentralization and trustlessness" of Phala Network, we can understand it from the following aspects :
- Phala does not own any servers, anyone with qualified hardware can join the network to become a node and share computing power;
- The Phala codebase is open source for review and available on Github;
- Phala assumes that worker operators (humans) are not trusted, so any worker must run Secure-Enclave-based hardware and needs to prove its integrity during worker registration. This offers the promise of hardware-based execution correctness and data privacy. Phala further designs its supply-side Tokenomics to encourage high-quality services with both performance and stability;
- All Workers are governed by the blockchain, which is governed by an on-chain committee. Phala Network follows democratic governance.
In the latest report analyzing the degree of decentralization of Polkadot parachains, we can see that the degree of decentralization of Phala is remarkable from different dimensions .
But we still focus on its core service, that is, the level of cloud computing technology architecture. Different from common privacy protocols and other Web3 cloud services on the market, Phala is based on the "blockchain + Secure Enclave" architecture, which endows its powerful computing capabilities to other storage protocols through composability .
All computations on the Phala network run in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which ensures the security of computation loads, including the correctness of program execution, as well as the confidentiality and privacy of data.
With the help of secure computing services and its Phat Contract, Phala brings the solution of "on-chain consensus, off-chain trusted computing" to Web3. Phala does not need to concentrate storage and computing in one place, thus achieving low resource usage and higher operating efficiency. Enterprises can thus run applications with privacy security, high performance and low cost on a decentralized infrastructure.
In short, Phala is committed to providing a general-purpose decentralized computing network that can freely combine decentralized smart contracts, storage protocols, and data indexing services to bring secure decentralized cloud services to Web3 .
On April 24th, Phala officially stated that it has completed the UI of Phat Contract's no-code experience, and completed the v3 of Phat Contract Off-Chain Rollup. The mainnet release of PhatContract is getting closer, and we look forward to it together!
After years of development, Web3 has been widely recognized by the public and is considered to be the foundation of the next generation Internet. It is true that there is still a long way to go before it can be implemented on a large scale, and many Web3 application projects still choose Web2 basic service providers, but this is only a matter of time.
The development of Web3 infrastructure is influenced by technological developments in many fields. It aims to make the web more open, free and secure, and give individual business users more data ownership and control .
It is believed that with the continuous advancement of the construction of Web3 decentralized basic service facilities, various Web3 application projects will continue to blossom. In any case, making "society fairer, more inclusive, and improving the well-being of the entire society" has always been the goal of technological development, and it is also the vision of Web3 and the original intention of all of us.