Tim Berners-Lee created the web server and browser in 1990. Back then, the web was of a free, rather decentralized nature in which no single entity was to control the access to it. With the client-server architecture of the web, however, centralization came about. Nowadays, the web as well as the Internet in general are highly centralized. There are only a few companies acting as gatekeepers to large parts of today’s Internet. The Internet as we know it is continuously struggling with issues related to its centralized nature – from censorship and attacks on net neutrality to manipulation attempts from companies with monopolistic power. These issues are systematic and major players like Amazon or Facebook are benefitting from the situation as it is. This business model is also highly reliant on centralized hyperscale data centers that also come with a whole set of issues, from their vulnerability and limited scalability to their extremely high energy consumption and more.

People have become the product of a business model where companies offer their services in exchange for personal data – in order to capitalize on and exploit the data, basically squeezing people out for their data like oranges for juice. In times where data exploitation is the norm, it makes sense that data is often referred to as digital oil or gold. Moreover, algorithms of social media platforms increasingly lead to content provoking controversy and addictive engagement as this type of content tends to increase the time people spend on the platforms – with shocking impacts like The Wall Street Journals’ investigation “The Facebook Files” and The New York Times’ audio series Rabbit Hole show.

All of these issues have strengthened the push towards decentralization, mainly associated with the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. However, many of the projects in the decentralized space still rely on centralized providers or structures to some degree. The second most-popular blockchain in the world, Ethereum, for example, has 60% of its nodes run on centralized cloud providers with 25% of them running on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Akash, a blockchain-based cloud computing platform, prevents unutilized capacity from centralized cloud computing services from going to waste. Leveraging this underutilized cloud capacity, however, also causes Akash to be highly dependent on centralized capacity. Dfinity’s platform for decentralized apps (dApps) is based on an ecosystem of independent data centers, which makes it rather centralized on an infrastructural level.

While the previously mentioned projects are all seeking to push decentralization, they all have one thing in common: they rely on centralized structures or providers at least to some degree and therefore, are not fully decentralized yet. So, what does true decentralization look like?

🔗How ThreeFold is Changing the Game

It is our mission to transform the Internet and Cloud and to create borderless opportunities for humanity. Therefore, we‘re truly committed to decentralizing the infrastructure behind the Internet to scale current and future digital workloads. At Threefold, we’re building an entirely new infrastructure from the ground up, starting with a Grid of new, neutral capacity and our operating system Zero-OS. Our ThreeFold Grid, based on open-source technology, enables an autonomous, secure, and energy-efficient infrastructure that allows for unlimited scalability while remaining affordable. Our Grid is the largest and most advanced peer-to-peer infrastructure in the world, already available in more than 50 countries and keeps expanding fast. With our energy-efficient full stack cloud infrastructure, uniting compute, storage, and network, we are much more comprehensive than other projects.

At ThreeFold, we believe in giving power to the people by developing technologies that empower individuals, enable social participation, and foster collaboration. We’re enabling even people without technical skills to join the network with plug-and-play 3Nodes offered through our certified hardware partners. The ThreeFold Grid is therefore more inclusive and allows any individual to participate. Our peer-to-peer nature removes the need of centralized servers and any type of intermediary, allowing applications and data to live closer to where they’re being utilized.

In addition to that, we believe that no one but you should own your data. Our technology empowers every user to be data sovereign, giving them full control over their own data by using a variety of innovative technologies, such as autonomous IT, blockchain, and peer-to-peer networking. This way, our technology is turning traditional IT upside down, enabling a data-sovereign Internet that gives users control and ownership of their data in an entirely secure, peer-to-peer IT ecosystem.

All in all, we provide the low-level primitives for a decentralized world, enabling any project to run on a fully decentralized, energy-efficient, and self-healing infrastructure. As we truly believe in collaboration to effect change at a large scale to fully decentralize the Internet and Cloud, our partnership ecosystem keeps growing. Most recently, we announced a strategic partnership with ownCloud, an alternative to public clouds with more than 200 million users worldwide, that aims to advance the decentralization of the consumer cloud.

So, we’d like to invite you to join forces with us to further push the decentralization of the Internet together – whether by becoming a 3Node or building on our ThreeFold Grid, by buying our ThreeFold Token (TFT), our currency for a decentralized world, or by testing our P2P Cloud. Let’s revolutionize the Internet together!

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.

🔗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.

• ThreeFold Forum
• ThreeFold Main Chat
• ThreeFold Farmers Chat
• ThreeFold Testing Chat
• ThreeFold Foundation GitHub
• ThreeFold Tech GitHub

🔗So what is the partnership all about?

Together with ThreeFold, Artheon aims to create the world’s largest open art database – made for everyone, and owned by everyone. We will provide access to art and cultural heritage to people around the world, without borders. Not just access, but a high-quality and high-resolution virtual reality experience where people can really immerse themselves in their surrounding environment. With Artheon, people can now even touch and hold paintings or artifacts, something that would clearly not be possible in real life. And while today, only a select few (relative to the total global population) have the opportunity to travel and to experience museums and cultural & sacred sites, Artheon will change that!

It’s not only about experience, though, it’s also about community and education and providing a more equal access to art and cultural objects. We’ll bring together a global community of museums, artists, and art seekers who can not only enjoy, but also teach and learn about the art and cultural objects housed within the Artheon universe. For Artheon, it’s imperative that people are able to access information about the artists and the art itself, and then make and share their own perceptions as well. No need or pressure to follow the direction of the current system’s ideology. This is a different angle from how we traditionally learn at school, where narrow or accepted views and concepts are imposed upon us. A key aim of Artheon is to bring different perspectives through collective, participatory, and experiental teaching and learning.

Looking ahead, the vision is that people will be able to create their own virtual spaces and expose them on Artheon. They can create something from scratch or even re-imagine a historical site as it was long ago and share it with the community.

🔗How does ThreeFold benefit Artheon?

From the start, there was a clear connection between Artheon and ThreeFold from a vision, values, and ethos perspective. But there are also some more specific reasons why Artheon chose and benefits from ThreeFold, which mainly revolve around the decentralized nature of the ThreeFold Grid.

Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) provide significant benefits to our new digital reality. These technologies open new ways of sharing information in areas such as the arts in the case of Artheon, allowing for upgraded and immersive experiences for users.

Decentralized clouds have been associated with the promise of new digital applications and services that come with a hyper-connected life. Because the graphics of VR/AR experiences require heavy rendering, on-device processes are augmented by splitting workloads between the VR/AR device and a decentralized cloud. So, graphics rendering on a decentralized cloud like what the ThreeFold Grid provides would be significantly improved by achieving a much lower latency. Another advantage of the ThreeFold Grid is that it provides an extremely high level of security and privacy, empowering Artheon and its users with real data sovereignty.

And finally, Artheon experienced an unfortunate event earlier this summer where their servers suffered from an intense heat wave and essentially burned up. There was no backup, and this would have been catastrophic in the scenario of them having millions of users. Good thing they aren’t live yet, but this is a great example of how centralized models fail. With a decentralized infrastructure like ThreeFold, this type of situation would not have occured, as data would be hosted on many locations.

So, by distributing the computing power closer to their users, a VR experience such as Artheon would not only improve their latency speed, security, and privacy, but also the resilience of their business model. 

🔗What is the status of Artheon (and its partnership with ThreeFold)?

Over the past year, Artheon has been making incredible improvements to the graphics and experience, and adding as many new pieces of art as possible into the universe. As you can imagine, the possibilities really are endless, but here are some of the milestones planned for the rest of this year:

• Planning to add partial DLC (downloadable content) support and photogrammetry-scanned locations for users to experience
• New UI for desktop (Windows, MacOS, Linux)
• Implementation of desired social features such as follower and friend system
• People will be able to see who of their friends or people they follow are online – from that, they can connect to a server and join them to share experiences together
• People will also be able to see how many people are online at the moment and where they are located on the globe (if permissions are allowed)
• Allow the possibility for museums to host free or closed paid exhibitions
• Artheon will be hosted on the ThreeFold Grid!
  

🔗What can you do now to get involved?

If you’re reading this section, we’re thrilled you are interested in what is happening with Artheon! We are, too! As Artheon is not yet live, the best option for you is to join the Artheon Early Access chat on Telegram where you can stay tuned there for updates and ask questions directly to Artheon’s creators and contributors.