AI and DeSci: The infrastructure potential behind the narrative of crossing bull and bear markets

Author: Evan Lu, Waterdrip Capital

How far is it from mass adoption

A week after Trump won the US election, although BTC rose by more than 20%, Meme coin launches have once again ushered in a frenzy; but in the past six months of lows, the market seems to have been popular with a "lack of support for the crypto industry", while the Depin industry was still under construction, and some of its sub-fields, cloud computing, were still a long way from real mass adoption. But in the Meme speculation boom, CZ and Vitalik personally called orders, making the DeSci concept unexpectedly hot again. It is undeniable that every new concept cannot escape the stage of speculation and hype at the beginning of its birth; DeSci is no exception. But the blockchain industry, which started with Bitcoin, has developed for so many years, and it is time to consider how to build an application landing stage that benefits mankind.

AI & Desci

At the beginning of last year, the AI ​​revolution led by ChatGPT injected new narrative power into this bull market. "AI represents advanced productivity, and blockchain represents advanced redistribution and integration of production relations." This new paradigm consensus quickly aroused heated discussions in the community and became one of the new narratives on the eve of the bull market. Driven by this trend, projects such as Bittensor and fetch.ai have quickly emerged and become the leaders of this concept.

Not only that, in September this year, as the crypto market gradually regained its vitality, the meme coin around the AI ​​concept also ushered in a wave of launches due to $Goat. A small team or even an individual only needs to develop an AI Agent with specific functions - whether it is AI currency speculation or AI virtual companionship, and then cultivate their own community and fan base - it only takes 1 week to do well; finally, "earn profits" by launching the meme coin of the same name.

The concept of DeSci can be traced back to the last bull market, but it is limited by the long cycle of "Science" in Crypto+Science, and it has never had much presence in the crypto industry. It really started to go viral on November 8, when Binance labs announced its investment in BIO Protocol. This was Binance labs' first foray into the field of decentralized science (DeSci). Less than a week after the announcement, CZ attended Binance's DeSci Day event in Bangkok and discussed DeSci insights with Vitalik. CZ even expressed his hope to see 1,000 DeSci projects next year. After that, both Binance official tweets and CZ posts mentioned DeSci many times. CZ and Vitalik's passionate calls for singles caused the DeSci concept meme coins to be in the spotlight; within just a few days, many popular Desci concept meme coins emerged, such as $uro and $rif corresponding to single drugs issued by BIO, and $SciHub used to donate to Sci-Hub, the world's largest open source paper platform. The total market value of related concepts has exceeded 800 million US dollars.

But a good narrative is not only reflected in short-term popularity, but also requires long-term infrastructure construction to realize the real application scenario. The most essential basic support of AI - computing resources, the scheduling of idle computing power through Depin cloud computing is still in the development stage, and there is not much large-scale adoption, and the cost and computing environment stability and response speed have not been effectively verified by the market.

The core technology behind DeSci - decentralized storage, has been proven since the development of the IPFS protocol. Compared with traditional centralized storage solutions, it has lower costs and higher security; and the current solution is relatively mature. It can be said that the infrastructure of DeSci has been built, and now more people need to recognize and adopt the concept of decentralized storage.

Tracing the concept of DeSci, is it still more speculative than practical?

I remember that I talked with several project parties who were quietly working on the DeSci track at the Hong Kong web3 Carnival in April this year, but they all told me without exception that this is a project that needs to be mentally prepared for "long-termism". At this stage, it can only be said that DeSci has just been introduced into the user's field of vision, and it has just reached the stage of completing the plan to build the glorious Rome.

So what is DeSci? DeSci is Decentralized Science. It promotes global open access to scientific research data through distributed storage technology, reduces the single control of data by governments or institutions, and avoids the possibility of leakage, loss and malicious tampering of centralized storage. This model not only makes scientific research activities open and transparent, but also allows researchers around the world to share resources freely. In addition, DeSci uses smart contracts and DAO to improve the transparency and efficiency of scientific research funding and help scientists raise funds for research. This fundamentally changes the traditional source structure of scientific research funds and greatly improves the efficiency of fund use.

In summary, the DeSci model has achieved innovation in two areas: 1. Fundraising is achieved by launching tokens, and the currently popular $rif and $uro both raise funds for the development of the two drugs behind them by launching meme coins. 2. The storage of research data is transferred from centralized servers to decentralized and permanently non-lost blockchains.

"Decentralized Science (DeSci) has successfully introduced the liquidity of Meme coins to universities and laboratories around the world to support real scientific research." The founder of BIO Protocol's reply to CZ on X also revealed the essence of DeSci: using the speculative psychology of the Crypto market to promote and accelerate the value realization and more practical applications in the field of scientific research.

BIO Protocol business model, source: https://docs.bio.xyz/bio

Currently, the popularity of the DeSci concept is mainly supported by the wealth effect driven by meme. Due to the short-term huge exposure, the development of the industry is engulfed by the market's emotional side. However, the field of scientific research requires continuous and huge capital investment and faces high risks and high failure rates, which is contrary to the short-term speculation and rapid liquidity depletion of Meme.

Therefore, in the short term, a large number of speculators will enter this track, wanting to use this as a gimmick to release project financing, and aiming at "financing is profit" instead of sincerely investing in scientific research. Therefore, after a short period of popularity, DeSci will enter a stage of separating the true from the false, and gradually cultivate users' awareness of DeSci in the process of educating the market, and then it may truly achieve the goal of "using crypto finance to drive the realization of scientific research results".

At present, the demand for data storage and on-chain proof behind DeSci is extremely huge. If DeSci can break through the boundaries with the popularity of Meme and effectively establish a mature business model, then decentralized storage will become the infrastructure in the field of DeSci, and this stable and huge demand will greatly promote the development of the decentralized storage ecosystem.

Decentralized storage has matured, and the infrastructure behind Desci should not be underestimated

 Decentralized storage has gone through multiple stages of development from the early Storj to Filecoin, Arweave and the IPFS protocol behind it. An analysis in May 2023 pointed out that decentralized storage is about 78% cheaper on average than centralized storage, and in enterprise-level data storage, this difference can be as high as 121 times. In addition, decentralized storage has obvious advantages in data security, privacy, and reliability. However, although some Web2 customers have begun to accept decentralized storage solutions such as Filecoin and Arweave, centralized storage with a more intuitive user experience and mature product system still dominates the market. Rather, Filecoin's limitations in programmability and restrictions on permanent data storage, and the relatively high cost brought by Arweave's focus on "permanent storage" are still pain points that the industry has not fully resolved.

Comparison between centralized storage and decentralized storage, source: Binance Research

Just in April last year, Binance announced the launch of BNB Greenfield, marking a new height for decentralized storage. The biggest feature of Greenfield is that it provides a decentralized storage infrastructure for the entire BNB Chain ecosystem, enabling users and decentralized applications (DApps) to create, store and exchange fully owned data. Through the native cross-chain bridge with BSC, users can freely transfer BNB between BSC and Greenfield, so as to conveniently interact with DApps built on Greenfield.

Compared to IPFS and Arweave, BNB Greenfield's advantages lie in its deep integration with BNB Chain, cross-chain support, the combination of decentralized storage and computing power, and low cost and high efficiency. This makes Greenfield more suitable for decentralized finance (DeFi), smart contracts and Web3 application scenarios, with stronger scalability and ecological synergy. In the future, GreenField can be used in the following scenarios, including but not limited to:

• Website hosting:Users can quickly deploy and host websites through APIs, simplifying the registration and payment process.

• Personal cloud storage:Use private keys to create secure personal cloud storage and easily upload and download encrypted files.

• Blockchain Data Storage:Store BNB Smart Chain and other ecosystem data to reduce latency and improve availability.

• Content Publishing:Creators store and mirror their works to the BNB Smart Chain, which can be accessed by buyers after the transaction is completed.

• Social Media:Social media influencers can fully control content data, publish and benefit from it through decentralized platforms.

• Personal Data Market:Provide decentralized data storage and management solutions to ensure the security of personal data.

At the same time, the development of GreenField is also inseparable from the support of its ecological projects. Just this year, the BNB ecological official launched a community voting activity for the most favorite projects. The ecosystem is divided into 5 categories. In the Infra category, 4EVERLAND and BAS, as Greenfield's native infrastructure, are very important components of it.

BNB Ecosystem Catalyst Awards Candidates, Source: Binance Square

4EVERLAND

4EVERLAND is the largest decentralized storage provider in the Greenfield ecosystem. As an officially certified storage provider (SP) and validator, 4EVERLAND provides powerful storage resources on Greenfield, supports both BNB Chain and opBNB networks, and is committed to building an efficient decentralized storage network. By integrating the features and advantages of IPFS and Arweave on the basis of GreenField, 4EVERLAND provides a better integrated solution for storage networks, providing a more user-friendly experience and reducing the difficulty of using decentralized storage.

Its key advantages are:

• Dual roles of storage and verification: As a storage provider (SP) and validator of Greenfield, 4EVERLAND not only provides storage solutions for users, but also participates in the proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism to ensure the security of the blockchain.

• Multi-chain support and compatibility: In addition to Greenfield, 4EVERLAND also supports BNB Chain and opBNB.

• Combination of decentralized storage and computing resources: 4EVERLAND, while providing storage services, combines its own 4Ever Node to use idle hardware to provide users with instant access + computing of stored data, achieving more efficient data usage scenarios.

• Flexible storage solutions: 4EVERLAND provides a hybrid solution suitable for hot storage and cold storage, combining IPFS + Arweave/Greenfield storage mode to meet different storage needs and compatible with Web2.

• Decentralized AI services: Through AI RPC (API standard), 4EVERLAND provides an aggregation solution for 100+ models, providing users with efficient AI model calling services.

• 4EVERLAND also provides DWeb hosting services, which also occupy an important position in the Greenfield ecosystem, providing developers with a one-click deployment function, so that the dApp front end can be quickly deployed to Greenfield storage, and cooperate with the RAAS (Rollup as a service) that the BNB ecosystem wants to do in the future to achieve a one-click chain function.

Currently, 4EVERLAND has more than 3 million registered users, 100,000+ daily active users, and stores 2,000 TB on IPFS (third in the IPFS ecosystem), 20 TB on Arweave (third in the Arweave ecosystem), and 30k+ daily interactions on Greenfield (first in the Greenfield ecosystem). In terms of financing, it has received funding from BNBChain, Polygon, Optimism, IPFS, Arweave, and ICP, and support from multiple well-known investment institutions.

Recently, 4EVERLAND has cooperated with several projects of DeSci to jointly promote the decentralized storage of scientific research literature. Some of DeSci's data that are not determined and cannot be modified are suitable for permanent storage in Arweave, while some data that is constantly updated is suitable for IPFS and GreenField. 4EVERLAND combines IPFS, Arweave and Greenfield to establish cold backup data in Arweave and hot data access on GreenField, thus establishing a decentralized storage solution suitable for DeSci.

BAS

BNB Attestation Service (BAS) is the underlying data protocol standard of BNB, which aims to generate authentication of verification information, and is used to introduce tens of millions of trusted private data into the Web3 ecosystem, especially to provide data support for AI. The characteristics of BAS are:

• Decentralized verification service:By introducing Web2 and Web3 data on the chain, it provides cross-platform verification services, supporting information from exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase, as well as data from social platforms such as X and TikTok. In addition, research data verification services, such as those involved in DeSci, can also be directly verified using BAS and the results can be uploaded to the chain.

• User sovereignty and data privacy:Users can actively upload data through the dApp project using the data set created by BAS and the data format standard defined; reducing the need for third parties to label and clarify data, achieving active classification and standardization of data, and returning the sovereignty of users to process their own data.

• AI training and data set services:Through decentralized data verification, BAS will directly provide the most reliable and available data for AI training and data set needs.

• Ecosystem Cooperation and Application:BAS has established connections with more than 3,000 independent certifiers, more than 100 data resource providers, and more than 100 ecological partners, supporting more than 30M authentications.

For Greenfield, the introduction of BAS provides it with data verification and management capabilities, further enhancing the security, transparency, and user control of the platform, making Greenfield a more stable decentralized storage solution. By combining with BAS, Greenfield can ensure data verification and compliance, while providing efficient data management and permission control functions.

An attempt at sustainable development in the crypto industry

GreenField is a very important strategic layout personally taught by Binance and even CZ himself. Since its launch, it has also been a major ecological innovation of the BNB ecosystem. Unlike opBNB, BNB chain, which directly faces C-side users, GreenField will work quietly behind the scenes. Its high performance and high interoperability will also be more conducive to the development of new narratives in the industry.

If DeSci's business model is verified, coupled with Binance's traffic support, this will undoubtedly greatly promote the prosperity of the BNB ecosystem, and Green Field will also be widely adopted. So far, this article has only affirmed the value investment potential of decentralized storage. From a more macro perspective, what really concerns our millions of crypto users and practitioners is whether the development of the crypto industry can be evergreen and sustainable.

CZ, Binance official, Vitalik has recently emphasized the importance of DeSci and has really invested real money to support this field. Even the Binance official account has specially published a research report on DeSci to justify its name. This is undoubtedly a great innovative attempt, not just hyping a concept. Behind the industry dynamics is the vision that blockchain finance can truly serve the market, realize value, and promote blockchain technology to truly contribute to society.