AI and DeSci: The Infrastructure Potential Behind the Narratives in Bull and Bear Cycles

How far is it from large-scale adoption? During the market downturn over the past six months, a viewpoint has emerged that the crypto industry lacks practical application support. Even in emerging fields like Depin, certain subfields such as cloud computing still have some distance to go before true large-scale adoption can be achieved. However, during the recent speculation frenzy, the DeSci concept has once again attracted attention.

Although every new concept inevitably goes through a phase of speculation and hype at its inception, the blockchain industry has developed to the point where it should consider how to build practical applications that benefit humanity.

AI and DeSci

At the beginning of last year, the AI revolution led by ChatGPT injected new momentum into this round of the market. The view that "AI represents advanced productive forces, while blockchain represents the redistribution and integration of advanced production relations" quickly sparked discussions, becoming one of the important narratives before the market warmed up. Against this trend, projects like Bittensor and fetch.ai have rapidly emerged.

In September this year, as the market gradually recovers, tokens related to the AI concept have also seen a surge. Some teams and even individuals are developing AI Agents with specific functions, cultivating communities and issuing tokens for profit.

The concept of DeSci can be traced back to the last bull market, but due to the long cycle of "Science", it has not received much attention. Its real breakout began on November 8 when a trading platform invested in BIO Protocol, marking its first foray into the DeSci field. Subsequently, several industry leaders attended related events and discussed insights on DeSci, sparking a frenzy for DeSci concept tokens, with the total market value of related projects exceeding $800 million.

However, good narratives require not only short-term hype but also the long-term infrastructure development to realize real application scenarios. The core support of AI—computing power resources, is still in the development stage through Depin cloud computing for idle computing power scheduling, with limited large-scale adoption, and both cost and stability still need to be validated by the market.

The core technology behind DeSci - decentralized storage, has been proven to be relatively lower in cost and more secure than traditional centralized storage solutions since the development of the IPFS protocol. Currently, the solutions are relatively mature, and the infrastructure of DeSci has basically been completed. Now, more people need to recognize and adopt the concept of decentralized storage.

DeSci Concept Tracing: Is speculation still greater than practicality?

DeSci, or decentralized science, promotes global open access to research data through distributed storage technology, reducing the single control of data by governments or institutions, and avoiding the risks of leakage, loss, and tampering that centralized storage may face. This model makes scientific research activities more open and transparent, allowing global researchers to freely share resources. Additionally, DeSci uses smart contracts and DAOs to improve the transparency and efficiency of research funding, helping scientists raise research funds, fundamentally changing the traditional structure of research funding sources, and greatly enhancing the efficiency of fund utilization.

The DeSci model mainly innovates in two areas: 1. Raising funds through token issuance; 2. Shifting research data storage from centralized servers to a decentralized and permanently stored blockchain.

Currently, the popularity of the DeSci concept is mainly supported by the wealth effect driven by tokens, and the industry's development is greatly influenced by market sentiment. However, the research field requires continuous large amounts of funding, while facing high risks and high failure rates, which contradicts the characteristics of short-term speculation.

Therefore, in the short term, there may be a large number of speculators entering this field for financing purposes rather than genuine investment in scientific research. After a brief period of enthusiasm, DeSci will enter a stage of removing falsehoods to preserve truths, gradually cultivating users' understanding of DeSci during the educational market process, and only then may it truly achieve the goal of "utilizing crypto-finance to drive the monetization of scientific research results."

Currently, the demand for data storage and on-chain proof in DeSci is enormous. If DeSci can leverage its popularity to break boundaries and establish a mature business model, decentralized storage will become the infrastructure of the DeSci field, and this stable and large demand will greatly promote the development of the decentralized storage ecosystem.

Decentralized storage has matured, and the underlying infrastructure of DeSci should not be underestimated.

Decentralized storage has gone through multiple stages of development, from the early Storj to Filecoin, Arweave, and the underlying IPFS protocol. An analysis in May 2023 pointed out that decentralized storage is, on average, about 78% cheaper than centralized storage, with differences in enterprise-level data storage reaching up to 121 times. Moreover, decentralized storage has significant advantages in terms of data security, privacy, and reliability.

However, despite some Web2 customers starting to accept decentralized storage solutions like Filecoin and Arweave, centralized storage with a more intuitive user experience and a mature product system still dominates the market. The limitations of Filecoin in programmability and data permanence, as well as the relatively high costs associated with Arweave's "permanent storage," remain pain points that the industry has not fully addressed.

In April last year, a trading platform launched a decentralized storage infrastructure to provide a decentralized storage framework for its ecosystem, allowing users and DApps to create, store, and exchange fully owned data. Through a native cross-chain bridge with the smart chain, users can freely transfer assets between the smart chain and the storage network, conveniently interacting with DApps built on the storage network.

Compared to IPFS and Arweave, this new storage infrastructure has advantages in deep integration with the ecosystem, cross-chain support, a combination of decentralized storage and computing capabilities, as well as low cost and high efficiency. This makes it more suitable for DeFi, smart contracts, and Web3 application scenarios, with stronger scalability and ecosystem synergy.

4EVERLAND

4EVERLAND is the largest storage provider in a certain decentralized storage ecosystem. As an officially certified Storage Provider (SP) and validator, 4EVERLAND offers powerful storage resources while supporting multiple networks, dedicated to building an efficient decentralized storage network. By integrating the features and advantages of IPFS and Arweave, 4EVERLAND provides a better storage network integration solution, improving user experience and reducing the difficulty of using decentralized storage.

Its key advantages include:

• Storage and verification dual role
• Multi-chain support and compatibility
• Combination of decentralized storage and computing resources
• Flexible storage solutions
• Decentralized AI Services
• DWeb Hosting Service

Currently, 4EVERLAND has over 3 million registered users, with daily active users exceeding 100,000. It ranks third in ecosystem storage volume on IPFS and Arweave, and ranks first in daily interaction counts among certain storage networks. In terms of financing, it has received support from multiple well-known public chains and investment institutions.

Recently, 4EVERLAND has collaborated with multiple DeSci projects to promote the decentralized storage of research literature. By combining IPFS, Arweave, and emerging storage networks, a decentralized storage solution suitable for DeSci has been established.

BAS

A certain certification service (BAS) serves as the underlying data protocol standard, aimed at generating verification information certification to bring hundreds of millions of trusted private data into the Web3 ecosystem, particularly providing data support for AI. The characteristics of BAS include:

• Decentralized Verification Service
• User Sovereignty and Data Privacy
• AI Training and Dataset Services
• Ecosystem Cooperation and Application

The introduction of BAS provides data verification and management capabilities for emerging storage networks, enhancing platform security, transparency, and user control, making it a more robust decentralized storage solution.

Attempts for Sustainable Development in the Crypto Industry

A certain emerging storage network is an important strategic layout, and since its launch, it has become a significant innovation in the ecosystem. Unlike the "frontline players" that directly face users, this network works quietly behind the scenes, with its high performance and interoperability benefiting the development of new narratives in the industry.

If the DeSci business model is validated, coupled with the traffic support of large trading platforms, it will greatly promote the prosperity of the relevant ecosystem, and emerging storage networks will also achieve large-scale adoption. From a macro perspective, what truly concerns tens of millions of crypto users and practitioners is whether the crypto industry can develop sustainably in the long term.

Industry leaders and mainstream platforms have recently emphasized the importance of DeSci and invested resources to support it, marking an innovative attempt rather than just a hype of the concept. This reflects the vision of blockchain finance serving the market, realizing value landing, and promoting blockchain technology's contribution to society.