The Latest from ThreeFold - Foundation

As we’ve recently been exploring decentralized projects to see where ThreeFold is in the space and where we stand out, we thought it’s a good time to also look into how we compare to traditional, centralized cloud providers.

The cloud market is a highly complex and competitive one, currently dominated by the market leaders Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure who account for more than half of the worldwide cloud revenues. This centralized nature of today’s cloud as well as its hyper-scale data center model are the cause for various issues, ranging from the monopolistic power of the few big market players and vendor lock-in effects to the incredibly high energy consumption of data centers and the limited scalability of the current model. Moreover, traditional data centers are more prone to outages and cyber attacks. We believe the ThreeFold Grid built by independent farmers around the globe and our ThreeFold P2P Cloud provide a solution to all of these issues.

While centralized cloud providers do offer some benefits, such as robust feature sets and huge customer service teams, there are a few key and important differences we think any customer would care about:

🔗Decentralization

This is the biggest and most obvious difference. Today, big tech holds a monopoly on the Internet and Cloud markets, meaning they somehow became the gatekeepers of what was originally intended to be a distributed, neutral Internet. When using AWS or Google Cloud, the data is stored in centralized data centers owned by private corporations. These data centers are susceptible to hacking and outages that can take down massive chunks of the Internet. In this system, people have become products, as they exchange their data for “free” online experiences. With ThreeFold, data is stored fully decentralized on the peer-to-peer ThreeFold Grid, where the physical hardware is owned by independent ThreeFold Farmers, and the data is owned by as well as only accessible to the person(s) who put it there. So, hackers can’t get in and due to the decentralized nature of the ThreeFold Grid, large-scale outages would be much less likely as well. Further, no organization or entity needs to be trusted and people are not treated as products – with ThreeFold’s infrastructure, the Internet is owned by the people.

🔗Limitless Scalability at the Edge

Our lightweight operating system Zero-OS makes it possible and even easy to install a node close to where the data is being consumed. There is no need for large servers, nor for heavy power supply installations. Together with our hardware partners, we’re offering 3Nodes with plug-and-play functionalities, allowing anyone to participate. This makes our model infinitely scalable at the edge. Hyper-scale data centers are not able to provide these levels of scalability and edge benefits. In order to scale their operations, centralized cloud providers need to build more data centers and take care of the related maintenance which takes time and costs billions. The traditional data center model also isn’t well suited for the edge, as this requires flexibility and close proximity to the respective data.

🔗Security

Centralized clouds are secure, but vulnerable. At ThreeFold, we pride ourselves on the levels of security we’re providing. The peer-to-peer nature of our technology means end-to-end transmission of data between parties (with no middlemen). This is a big one: Nothing is being stored or copied in central servers. Moreover, ThreeFold’s self-driving and self-healing IT removes the need for human intervention and eliminates the many back doors present in current architecture. So, security issues caused by human error and hacking possibilities both diminish greatly. In addition to that, there is the distributed storage algorithm which makes it nearly impossible for data to be lost. And much more. You can find more info on our wiki or in this forum post.

🔗Privacy

The fact that you own your data and nobody – not even us – can get access to it is key to making ThreeFold much more private than centralized cloud providers. On top of that, connections within our global overlay network, the Planetary Network, are peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted.

🔗Affordability

In the end, the centralized cloud is quite expensive, whereas our ThreeFold P2P Cloud is much more cost-effective. Learn more about this in our cloud pricing comparison here.

🔗Energy Efficiency

While electricity for storing and transporting data, administration, human resources, and even gas (to transport physical data-holding devices) lead to a very high energy consumption, our dispersed storage model and peer-to-peer infrastructure allow for significant energy savings. So, another big difference between ThreeFold and centralized cloud providers is that we’re up to 100x more energy-efficient.

All in all, the combination of our ThreeFold Grid and ThreeFold P2P Cloud provide significant advantages over centralized cloud providers with their hyper-scale data centers. From decentralization and infinite scalability at the edge to considerable energy savings and cost effectiveness as well as data privacy and security, our solution has much more value to offer, while solving critical issues related to centralized clouds. If you’d like to test our cloud solution yourself, take a look here. You can also start participating in our decentralized ecosystem by becoming a 3Node on our ThreeFold Grid.

An example to illustrate this challenge is the fact that up to 60% of Ethereum (the world’s second most-popular blockchain) nodes run on centralized cloud providers and 25% of them run on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

While the topic is being addressed, it isn’t being solved at scale. The good news is that ThreeFold can play a large part in solving it.

🔗Why should blockchains make this move?

The blockchain movement, as mentioned, is very heavily tied to the movement around decentralization. Cryptocurrencies represent the move away from centralized banks as the authorities and gatekeepers around money – just as ThreeFold and similar projects represent the move away from centralized clouds as the authorities and gatekeepers around data. The thing is, if blockchains are to rely on centralized cloud for hosting, they aren’t truly embodying decentralization.

Understandably, many blockchains have chosen centralized cloud providers in the past because there wasn’t much of an alternative. But now, the Decentralized Cloud (DeCloud) movement has changed all of that.

Here is how some specific audiences can benefit:

🔗For Node Operators

Any full node or validator node can run on ThreeFold’s Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Cloud, making that particular Blockchain even more community-owned, and more decentralized from an IT/cloud level. Any node operator can choose to run their nodes from any farmer location on the ThreeFold Grid, totally peer-to-peer between the chosen farmer and the node operator. The deployed workloads are computed in a P2P manner, no middle party involved.

🔗For dApp Developers

Web3/Blockchain developers can use ThreeFold’s P2P Cloud - offering both compute and storage - to build and power their applications in a truly decentralized cloud infrastructure, both blockchain-native and cloud-native. A strong advantage here is that developers have the ability to leverage Kubernetes, Docker, S3, and other cloud-native tools (all compatible / integrated with the ThreeFold) to power and optimize their data processing capabilities, as well as the overall functionality of their dApps. But the sweet spot is that it is deployed on a decentralized IT infrastructure, close to where users would be located.

🔗But why choose ThreeFold over other DeCloud projects?

There may be bigger names in the space, but ThreeFold’s technology and offerings are much more comprehensive than the rest. ThreeFold provides decentralized storage, compute, and network all under one roof (whereas most other projects offer only one of the three) and as mentioned, we have created an environment for developers which is highly-compatible to the developer tools and solutions they use today. Further, ThreeFold is building new infrastructure from the ground up (rather than relying on extra space in data centers) and the technology is truly peer-to-peer.

We already have a number of partners in the space who recognize these advantages.

Any blockchain protocol or dApp, whether operating DeFi, NFTs, DEXs, etc, will at some point need to leverage the power of the decentralized cloud and escape from centralized cloud providers. We’re seeing some of that adoption from a decentralized storage side with IPFS, which has been adopted by many dApps, and others – but as a developer, you will have to think twice, not just about where your/your users’ data is being stored, but also about how (and where) your app is computed and powered.

Participate now in our quest to fully decentralize the Internet by becoming a node on our grid or buying TFT.

Welcome to the third stop on our journey that aims to better understand the space we operate in and how ThreeFold stands out. After exploring Dfinity and Akash, I will now take a closer look at Filecoin to discover the similarities as well as differences of their project and ThreeFold. Let’s dive right in!

🔗Filecoin & how the project compares to ThreeFold

Filecoin is a global decentralized storage network and marketplace, founded in 2014 and based on the peer-to-peer protocol IPFS. The open-source project is one of the most popular providers of decentralized storage, with people storing files reliably on their mainnet. Like IPFS, Filecoin was founded by Protocol Labs.

IPFS and Filecoin are two separate but complementary open-source protocols. IPFS enables users to store, request, and transfer their data on Filecoin in a reliable way and directly from the IPFS network. As we deeply care about data security and privacy, I’d like to point out that IPFS does not provide a privacy layer and that, subsequently, “all traffic on IPFS is public” – meaning there is no guarantee that your data would be stored privately and confidentially. At ThreeFold, we’re determined to provide a holistically secure IT ecosystem with various secure and private solutions, such as our Quantum Safe File System (QSFS) and Planetary Network, to empower users by giving them control and ownership of their data.

Filecoin provides a persistent data storage system and has built an incentive structure on top of the IPFS protocol to reward the provisioning of storage for other people’s data. The project offers a peer-to-peer cloud storage network and marketplace, offering an open market and reducing entry barriers to becoming a storage provider.

We also offer a peer-to-peer network and cloud solution. Our ThreeFold Grid is the most advanced distributed peer-to-peer network there is, currently present in more than 50 countries. While Filecoin also has its own underlying blockchain, we’re the first full-stack blockchain-enabled cloud to be made open source. Moreover, we offer an energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure that unites compute, storage, and network, and integrates all leading industry-standard tools – allowing for a seamless migration of any digital workload, even from traditional cloud providers like Microsoft Azure or AWS.

With our cloud solution, developers are also enabled to deploy virtual machines or to discover the future of cloud computing with ZFlist, a game-changing Docker-compatible solution. As ZFlist is distributed across many mini virtual machines (VMs), it provides the ideal infrastructure for edge workloads on a highly secure level. On top of that, the data produced by these workloads can be stored in our Quantum Safe File System (QSFS) solution. Our QSFS is highly compatible with most storage tools (e.g. S3) and protocols (e.g. IPFS). In addition to that, developers using our tech are enabled to set the terms for storing their workloads based on their needs – they even have the opportunity to scale their applications to the edge with powerful compute and storage capabilities.

By contributing and lending storage capacity on Filecoin’s marketplace, providers receive rewards, executed by Filecoin’s blockchain. However, providers can only participate in Filecoin’s market if their nodes are “built specifically for Filecoin.” Actually, Filecoin nodes are IPFS nodes and their most advanced implementation is based on Lotus, the Filecoin Node Client. Our 3Nodes have easy plug-and-play functionalities, allowing even people without technical skills to participate by getting a 3Node from one of our certified hardware partners and downloading our stateless and lightweight operating system Zero-OS, the driving force behind our Grid. 3Nodes can even be plugged in at your home. Filecoin, however, doesn’t seem to offer any kind of certified hardware.

While we’ve built our own operating system from scratch, starting just with a Linux kernel, Filecoin doesn’t have its own OS. ThreeFold is not only more inclusive but also has a much higher scalability as anyone’s able to participate. In contrast, Filecoin even issues a warning in their documentation which states that in order to run a successful mining operation, one has to meet high hardware requirements and to be highly familiar with Filecoin. Thanks to our autonomous, self-healing technology, no maintenance is required. To ensure the security of our 3Nodes can’t be accessed physically once booted. Therefore, our ThreeFold Grid is much more inclusive, as the network capacity on it is provided by many people and organizations constituting what we like to call “People’s Internet.” Currently, we’re planning to extend our reach to enable even more people to join the ThreeFold Grid.

Filecoin’s native token FIL and the ThreeFold Token (TFT) are both utility tokens that fuel an open-source cloud. The earning model for FIL follows a simple logic for earning: the more storage a miner adds, the more FIL the respective miner will be rewarded with while also receiving FIL from users leasing their storage capacity. However, Filecoin miners must stake their FIL and can even lose their stake if their node does not perform, whereas our farming model doesn’t require staking, so farmers don’t risk losing their funds. In addition to that, our ThreeFold Tokens (TFT) can represent either a unit of compute, storage or network on the ThreeFold Grid and our farmers are rewarded for connecting one of these types of capacity to our Grid. Moreover, we’ll soon implement a new discount model, providing users with discounted capacity pricings based on the amount of ThreeFold Tokens stored in a user’s wallet.

In Filecoin’s model, mining means contributing storage capacity to be leased by users on the marketplace that are looking to store their data. Currently, Filecoin has two types of miners – storage miners, who are responsible for storing data, and retrieval miners, who are responsible for the fast retrieval of files. A retrieval miner’s “ability to close retrieval deals” are determined by the miner’s respective bandwidth and response time. ThreeFold’s farming is the concept of expanding the Internet with more network, compute, and storage capacity. Farmers are rewarded income in the form of TFTs for providing internet capacity. Moreover, anyone can become a farmer, as farmers are independent from ThreeFold. There’s no technical knowledge is required to connect to our global peer-to-peer Internet infrastructure and all it takes is network bandwidth and electricity, in addition to our 3Node – without the interference of any type of intermediary. Therefore, a ThreeFold Farmer is ThreeFold’s more sustainable equivalent of the miners of other cryptocurrencies, disrupting the centralized data center model.

🔗Conclusion

To conclude, the two projects share the same vision of bringing users’ data closer to their respective owners, establishing an open cloud market that is independent from the few big centralized cloud providers currently dominating the market. Like ThreeFold, Filecoin seeks to provide a network built as well as owned by the people, regardless of their location. Nevertheless, Filecoin is focused on storage and mainly based on the IPFS protocol, only providing an incentive layer on top. In contrast, ThreeFold provides all three major low-level components of the internet’s backbone: compute, storage and network. Additionally, ThreeFold’s P2P Cloud offers a holistic set of solutions – from our Planetary Network and our Quantum Safe File System to our eVDC and marketplace. All in all, the technology and infrastructure we’re providing is turning traditional IT upside down.

This is why ThreeFold is the ideal substrate for projects like Filecoin to run on, as we’re already IPFS-compatible and provide the low-level primitives for a fully decentralized cloud. So, we believe Filecoin and ThreeFold could team up to jointly drive the decentralization of cloud.

On their website, Filecoin states that they’re all about “coming together to collaborate and build something greater,” so they seem open to collaboration – which is very appealing to us, as we truly believe in collaboration to effect change at a large scale to fully decentralize the Internet and Cloud. Thanks for continuing this journey with me and don’t forget to stay tuned for the next stop: Storj!

As announced in the first episode of this series, I’d like to shed some light on the complex decentralization and blockchain space and look into what fellow projects have to offer. There are various projects decentralizing parts of the internet. So in this second blog post, we’ll be exploring Akash and their solutions to find out what we have in common and where we differ. Follow me on the second step of my journey to better understand the space we operate in and how ThreeFold stands out.

🔗Akash & how the project compares to ThreeFold

Founded in 2015, Akash is an open-source and blockchain-based cloud computing platform. They strive for an open, permissionless, and sovereign cloud that allows anyone to reserve computing resources without any intermediaries. Their cloud platform provides a simple way for deploying and scaling cloud applications.

The Akash Network is a decentralized, on-chain marketplace for leasing cloud computing resources, while the Akash Container Platform is an off-chain platform for cloud management services (deployment, hosting, and management of workloads) on Kubernetes, the industry standard for container orchestration. We also integrated Kubernetes into our P2P Cloud solution, but we didn’t stop there. On ThreeFold’s cloud solution, developers additionally have the option to deploy virtual machines or to discover the future of cloud computing with ZFlist – a game-changing Docker-compatible solution that is distributed across many mini VMs, positioning itself as the ideal infrastructure for edge workloads. And all data produced by these workloads can be stored in our Quantum Safe File System solution that is highly compatible with most storage tools (e.g. S3) and protocols (e.g. IPFS).

With Akash, developers would get access to what is probably the best decentralized computing cloud on the market, whereas ThreeFold offers a full stack cloud infrastructure that unites compute, storage, and network. Having integrated all leading industry-standard tools, ThreeFold’s cloud solution allows for a seamless migration of any digital workload – even from centralized cloud providers like AWS or Microsoft Azure. This empowers developers from all over the world to deploy their applications and workloads on a fully decentralized infrastructure, without having to learn new tools. Developers using Akash, however, may still need to rely on other decentralized projects to decentralize the storage and network components of their solutions.

Akash sees their USP in hosting containers that allow any type of cloud-native application to be hosted without vendor lock-in or having to learn new protocols, a vision shared and extended by ThreeFold as the project is already compatible with most of the industry standards. With the integration of Terraform into the upcoming third release of the ThreeFold Grid, developers will be capable of hosting any existing or future Linux workload seamlessly.

🔗Network and development possibilities

Akash is one of the most robust decentralized compute solutions out there and is one of the key players in driving the DeCloud movement. On its platform, computing resources can be leased on the Akash Marketplace, driven by its blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK. It’s already being used by a range of blockchains and applications. On their marketplace, users can determine the terms and price for their deployments and have cloud providers bid for the opportunity in a reversed auction. Nevertheless, the project still relies on centralized data centers as they seek to prevent unutilized capacity from centralized cloud computing services to go to waste, leveraging about 85% of this underutilized cloud capacity from data centers. So, while Akash is preventing capacity from being wasted, they also highly depend on centralized capacity – and so do the workloads using their platform.

With ThreeFold, developers are enabled to tailor the terms for storing their workloads to fit their needs, benefiting from full decentralization and edge possibilities. Moreover, developers get access to the most distributed peer-to-peer infrastructure in the world – the ThreeFold, currently present in more than 50 countries. Another unique attribute of the ThreeFold Grid is that the capacity within the network is provided by many people and organizations, forming an infrastructure that can be described as the “People’s Internet.” It is the first full-stack blockchain-enabled cloud to be made open source, allowing anyone to connect cloud capacity to the network by downloading Zero-OS, our stateless and lightweight operating system powering the ThreeFold Grid. Once booted, the servers run and can’t be accessed physically. As they’re self-healing, they don’t require any maintenance. All in all, this model flips traditional IT upside down, allowing anyone to join the ThreeFold ecosystem.

Both projects also reward their communities for providing capacity. Akash planned to launch a limited edition for an own node device, called Supermini, with plug-and-play functionalities similar to our 3Node. However, Akash just announced that they’ll be postponing the launch of their Supermini indefinitely, meaning they won’t be offering anything comparable to our 3Node anytime soon. Our 3Node is a general purpose computer that acts as a low-level provider for IT capacity. It is booted with our unique operating system Zero-OS and enables even people without technical skills to participate. We’re collaborating with certified hardware partners and plan to extend our reach in the near future to allow even more people to join the ThreeFold Grid.

🔗Tokenomics and incentive models

Both, Akash Token (AKT) and ThreeFold Token (TFT), are utility tokens fuelling an open-source cloud. While the Akash Tokens (AKT) represent a unit of compute on the Akash Network, ThreeFold Tokens (TFT) represent a unit of compute, storage or network on the ThreeFold Grid. Akash’s payment model allows users to pay for what they need, when they need it, using a reverse auction. In order to create a deployment, users have to provide a deposit first. As payments are effected passively, it is crucial for users to keep their deposits funded to maintain the lease of their capacity reservations. With our ThreeFold Blockchain, which will be released on Testnet 3.0 soon, a new billing model is being introduced. This model allows users to authorize smart contracts to automatically deduct their wallets (similarly to a direct debit transaction), depending on how much capacity they use. Additionally, we’re implementing a new discount model, which will provide users with discounted capacity pricings according to the amount of ThreeFold Tokens stored in a user’s wallet.

🔗Conclusion

All in all, Akash does a great job with regards to decentralizing cloud capacity. However, it doesn’t challenge the status-quo in terms of data privacy. At ThreeFold, we’re determined to empower users, to give them back control and ownership of their data in an entirely secure, peer-to-peer IT ecosystem. While Akash and ThreeFold seem like competitors on a cloud level, we see ourselves more as a potential decentralized substrate for Akash to scale to the edges of our world. Akash developers would surely benefit from the lightweight and stateless features of our Zero-OS which could provide them with a more efficient and private infrastructure to test, build, and collaborate on workloads.

Akash and ThreeFold share the same goal – to bring secure, performant, and data-sovereign cloud solutions for humanity to thrive. As Sam put in a nutshell: ThreeFold is the ideal substrate for projects like Akash to run on, instead of depending on traditional cloud providers – as we provide the low-level primitives for a decentralized world. So, we believe Akash and ThreeFold are complementary in many ways and could join forces to further push the boundaries of cloud decentralization together.

As we truly believe in collaboration, we invite all other projects in the space to join us in our quest to decentralize the entire Internet and Cloud stack to restore the neutrality we once took for granted. Thanks for taking this journey with me and don’t forget to stay tuned for the next stop: Filecoin!

🔗What is compute?

While storage and network are fairly intuitive concepts – where data lives and how it gets around – compute is about the more mysterious realm of data processing and ultimately computer programming. Don’t worry though, you don’t need any technical abilities to gain a deeper understanding of what’s happening behind the scenes when we use apps or interact with web sites.

As mentioned in the first part of this series, compute is basically what happens with data once it reaches its destination. Compute gives data relevance, by processing it according to the instructions provided by developers in their source code. When talking about what the ThreeFold Grid offers in terms of compute, it’s mostly about how the code that developers produce gets executed in order to provide the services we enjoy.

With ThreeFold, this actually happens for the most part using the same tools and systems provided by traditional cloud services, meaning that it’s highly compatible with existing cloud applications. What really makes the Grid different is that it’s been designed to provide a level of efficiency and security that simply isn’t possible without starting “from the ground up”. Before we get into specifics of compute offerings built into ThreeFold’s Zero-OS, let’s briefly explore what computing is.

🔗Playing with zeroes and ones

Everything a computer’s central processing unit does is based on a limited set of instructions that includes basic mathematical functions, logical operations, and ways to control the flow of a program. At their core, computers are really just automated adding machines that execute specified operations on whatever input they receive. It may be hard to believe that simple math creates all of the vibrant digital experience we enjoy, but at a certain low level, that’s the truth.

Take a messaging app as an example. Within a computer, all of the text, emojis, and images we see are represented by numbers. When we search for some text within a chat, matches are determined by checking if the numbers corresponding to the words we typed are equal to some numbers corresponding to words that appear in the chat history. This information is then converted into the list of results we see on screen.

In this context, compute is mostly responsible for organizing all of our messages based on the individual or group we were talking with, the time that the message happened, and whether or not we’ve opened it yet. Typically, a messaging app stores data both on our local devices and on a back end in the cloud. Compute is also how the service decides to copy messages you sent on one device to other devices where you have the same app installed.

Here is an important distinction about how the ThreeFold Grid operates. In a traditional cloud environment, it is impossible to know for sure what is happening on the backend, even if you are the one running the service. The administrative access retained by the cloud provider can be used for surveillance and tampering that can be very difficult or impossible to detect.

Zero OS offers a unique assurance that no one can abuse the Grid in this way, because it operates autonomously with no facilities provided for human intervention. In order to utilize compute capacity on the Grid, individuals and organizations deploy their choice of several “primitives,” or basic components, that provide an environment for code to be executed and create the magic we experience as online applications.

🔗ThreeFold Compute Primitives

Since we’re getting a bit into the technical weeds here, we’ll just take a brief look at each primitive and what makes it special.

🔗Zmachine

Zmachine is a lightweight virtual machine (VM) implementation that’s been developed in a uniquely efficient way by ThreeFold. VMs are essentially computers within computers, allowing multiple operating systems to run on a single physical system. A common example is running the Windows operating system on a Mac that’s already running MacOS.

In the cloud world, virtual machines are a classic way to manage complex deployments with flexibility and resilience – by packaging different components into different VMs that can be run side by side and moved between different physical servers with ease. While VMs have been replaced in many cases with the new container paradigm, which we’ll cover next, they are still widely used and provide a simpler solution than containers that’s sufficient for many use cases.

🔗Flist

The Flist is a next generation container format which extends the industry standard Docker container concept in an efficient and secure way. It is supported directly at the operating system level on Zero OS, and in its latest version on ThreeFold Grid 3.0, provides a unique advantage over traditional containers via the use of mini virtual machines.

Containers provide greater efficiency and flexibility than VMs, by sharing parts of the host operating system between containers rather than duplicating the full operating system for each component. This, however, means that containers typically come with less of an assurance that different workloads and their data remain isolated from each other. By employing mini VMs, the Flist concept provides better isolation than traditional container systems while retaining the advantages that containers offer over full VMs.

🔗Kubernetes

Containers usually represent small parts of a full solution, which are created, interconnected, and destroyed on an ongoing basis. Kubernetes is the industry standard container orchestration system, and it’s used to manage many of the largest and most complex cloud deployments. Kubernetes solutions are defined through configuration files that specify the types of containers, how updates are handled, and the network architecture both between containers and with the outside world.

Multiple physical servers or VMs are typically used for a Kubernetes “cluster” which provides redundancy and scalability. The ThreeFold Grid provides a lightweight Kubernetes VM that can be used to create clusters according to specific needs. Kubernetes users can, for the most part, simply bring their existing configuration files and recreate their deployments on a Grid based cluster seamlessly.

🔗Wrapping up

Taken together, the compute primitives offer a comprehensive alternative to existing cloud compute providers. Users of Docker, Kubernetes, and virtual machines can bring their deployments to the Grid with a minimal amount of migration effort. This is distinct from other decentralized cloud projects, which either offer a single solution like Kubernetes or a completely new environment that developers must adapt their code to run within.

Better yet, each compute offering on the ThreeFold Grid benefits from the unique efficiency and security features of Zero OS, as well as the unique aspects of the primitives themselves. Thanks again for joining me on this journey into the wonderful world of ThreeFold technology. In the next episode, we’ll cover the last element of the cloud infrastructure triad: network.

This post is the first one in a series to explore fellow projects and their solutions with regards to what they share with ThreeFold but also where we differ. Follow me on my journey through the decentralization and blockchain space to get a better understanding of where we are within the space. First up: Dfinity!

🔗The DFINITY Foundation & how it compares to ThreeFold

The DFINITY Foundation is a not-for-profit organization, founded in October 2016 by Dominic Williams and headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland. With a team of more than 200 people, Dfinity is developing the technology for the Internet Computer blockchain. It seeks to free the Internet from big tech and monopolization and return to the Internet’s open roots by offering a public blockchain on which systems and dApps can be rebuilt in a secure and scalable way.

As the term “rebuild” already indicates, Dfinity’s own SDK has to be used to build on their platform, whereas ThreeFold is highly compatible with industry standards tools and protocols (e.g. Linux-based workloads, S3, Docker containers, Kubernetes). This allows for existing applications to be easily migrated onto the ThreeFold Grid, while also offering unparalleled levels of security, privacy and decentralization. Moreover, Dfinity’s architecture is blockchain-based and offers a platform for dApps, while ThreeFold is based on its own operating system, Zero-OS, and is a platform for P2P network, storage and compute. The ThreeFold Grid uses a blockchain internally only where it is truly needed while also offering the missing capacity layer which enables every blockchain to become truly decentralized.

Another difference is that Dfinity is more about creating an ecosystem of independent data centers, whereas ThreeFold turns the data center model upside down by enabling anyone to become a node of the system. Even non-technical people can join the network with plug-and-play offerings through ThreeFold’s certified hardware partners. The ThreeFold Grid is therefore more inclusive and allows individuals to participate as well, which enables ThreeFold to scale an unlimited number of nodes, whereas Dfinity currently uses a limited set of existing data centers. The question remains of whether they will incentivise an easier way into their system. ThreeFold’s model is not only infinitely scalable but also can act as the ideal substrate for edge computing which is difficult for Dfinity to achieve with its more centralized structure. Also, Threefold’s self-driving and self-healing technology is unique in the space and removes the pain of having to monitor and maintain the nodes.

Furthermore, ThreeFold’s Zero-OS was created from scratch and its low-level design allows it to achieve unparalleled levels of security and decentralization. With VMs, Kubernetes, a next-generation container environment, and the Quantum Safe File System, ThreeFold’s offering is much more comprehensive than Dfinity’s canister offering. A potential collaboration, however, could be beneficial for Dfinity. By hosting their offerings on the ThreeFold Grid, Dfinity could benefit from ThreeFold’s fully decentralized and autonomous infrastructure.

🔗Conclusion

Both, Dfinity and ThreeFold, share the same ambition to revolutionize the Internet. While both provide a platform for dApps to be built upon, ThreeFold has a much more comprehensive and compatible stack. Therefore, Dfinity could benefit from moving to the ThreeFold Grid as an underlying infrastructure, rather than depending on their more centralized data center structure. In addition to that, their data center operators could also choose to become farmers on the ThreeFold Grid, while continuing to host Dfinity – without having to worry about system administration and maintenance as ThreeFold’s technology is fully self-healing. In that way they could finally run on a fully decentralized, energy-efficient, and self-healing infrastructure – and as Dfinity stated, they’re “committed to connecting those who believe the same”, so we hope to find the spirit of decentralization and collaboration in our future engagements.

Thanks for joining me on this journey throughout the decentralization and blockchain space. Stay tuned for the next stop: Akash!