C3V Talks #58 Recap: AMA With Subspace
Introduction:
C3V Talks #58
Guest:
Weilei Yu, CMO at Subspace Labs
Jianming Liu, Strategic Advisor at Subspace Labs
Host: Lin
Live time: March 12, 8 A.M. UTC, 2022
Q&A
There’ll be 3 sessions for today’s AMA:
- The host & the guest Q&A.
- Twitter Questions (The guest will pick 5 questions from comments on the Tweet)
- Community Questions
For the 1st session, let’s go through some general questions first.
Q1: In the beginning, could you please introduce yourself, and what is the Subspace Network?
For sure, I have been actively involved in crypto since 2017 and began bootstrapping crypto ecosystems in 2018. Prior to joining Subspace Labs, I joined Dapper Labs in 2020 to lead growth for Flow blockchain.
I led Flow’s growth strategy from pre-launch to a multi-billion dollar ecosystem with over 4 million mainnet accounts, a community distributed across 100+ countries, hundreds of projects launched on mainnet, and thousands of developers actively building in the ecosystem.
I advised over 30 crypto projects with GTM strategy, community building, and product offerings. Before Flow, I was the Head of Developer Relations and Community at Streamr, a p2p distributed network for real-time data exchange built initially on Ethereum and now powered by Polygon.
Q2: And what’s the Subspace Network Blockchain?
Subspace Network is a next-generation, massively distributed, and decentralized infrastructure layer that aims to support dApps developers (permanent storage, cross-chain bridging) and protocol designers (data availability).
Subspace introduces a novel architecture that can support millions of consensus nodes, which contribute their storage and computation resources to the network. Subspace is designed to be simple to integrate with and highly flexible, unopinionated.
It takes a modular, bottom-up approach to its roadmap, with the first stage delivering a massively scalable permanent on-chain storage layer. In the future, on-demand computation (execution) will be added on top of the storage. As a result, Subspace will be able to provide modular and highly scalable on-demand resources to web3 builders without sacrificing the decentralization premise — like a decentralized AWS to support dApps developers and protocol designers.
The Subspace Network is being developed by Subspace Labs, a team that hails experience from Dapper Labs/Flow, Restream, Protocol Labs, Brave, Stanford, and more. It was founded in 2018 by Jeremiah Wagstaff and Nazar Mokrynskyi, an unlikely duo of self-taught protocol hackers who met on Github.
While Subspace Labs is based in Palo Alto, California, the team is a global, remote-first crew of protocol hackers and blockchain enthusiasts. After years of R&D, funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the team has been building nonstop.
In March 2022, the team raised a $32.9 million round from Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com, Alameda Research, and more to continue building out their new layer-one focused on being more eco-friendly, truly decentralized, and highly scalable and secure.
Q3: What is Proof-of-Capacity (PoC)Consensus? Why do we need yet another PoC Blockchain?
Subspace uses a Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) consensus protocol where each disk of storage constitutes one vote towards electing the next block producer. PoC consensus is less capital- and energy-intensive than PoS and PoW respectively, allowing for a more eco-friendly, fairer blockchain.
Block miners, called “farmers” in the Subspace ecosystem, pledge segments of their disk space to be used by the network to store past blocks.
This allows them to participate permissionless, without any token staking. Differently from China, the disk space pledged on Subspace can be used to store on-chain data, allowing us to provide a massively distributed storage layer secured by the consensus directly. This can unlock a myriad of use-cases in addition to providing farmers with an additional source of fees.
Subspace starts from a Proof-of-Capacity (PoC) consensus protocol called Spartan. PoC was chosen to allow the lowest barrier to participation. In PoC consensus, one disk of memory constitutes one vote for the next block.
Miners, known as “farmers” in the Subspace ecosystem, first offer segments of their disk space to be used by the network. Everyday users will soon be able to propose disk space to the network using the project’s incumbent Desktop Farmer.
Q4: What’s the Famer’s Dilemma? How does Subspace resolve the Farmer’s Dilemma?
Indeed, that is a major dilemma for PoC blockchain, it is probably one of the most challenging ones and why Subspace is so innovative, yet scalable and secure.
One problem with PoC consensus is that of the “farmer’s dilemma,” where farmers become incentivized to maximize the amount of space they pledge towards consensus instead of using that space to retain the history of the network (storage).
To mitigate this problem, Subspace extends the PoC consensus protocol of Spartan to a Proof-of-Storage of the history of the network. Farmers who store more pieces of the blockchain’s history are more likely to be elected to produce the next block.
For this reason, storage is a first-class citizen in the programming model on Subspace. Any object stored becomes part of the Subspace network history with strong crypto-economic guarantees of permanency, immutability, and retrievability. Since the entire history of the blockchain is archived, developers can more easily produce simple, secure bridges between Subspace and other networks.
Moreover, Subspace decouples smart contract computation and transaction mining by having farmers order transactions and having a separate set of nodes (called executors) execute transactions, reducing the burden of redundant computation on farmers. Like BitTorrent, each storage node only has to store a partial replica of the full history while still participating in the global consensus.
This allows each additional farmer to bring more storage capacity and further secure the network. Most importantly, since more farmers mean more disk space up for grabs, increasing the number of farmers drives down storage costs for the entire network without compromising security or decentralization.
One clarification I would like to add before answering this question is that Subspace is not just a decentralized permanent storage provider. It is a fully-fledged blockchain network, but it happens so that our consensus allows us to have this feature.
One clarification I would like to add before answering this question is that Subspace is not just a decentralized permanent storage provider. It is a fully-fledged blockchain network, but it happens so that our consensus allows us to have this feature.
Differently from China, the disk space pledged on Subspace can be used to store on-chain data, allowing us to provide a massively distributed storage layer secured by the consensus directly.
This can unlock a myriad of use-cases in addition to providing farmers with an additional source of fees. This means that the more consensus nodes, and farmers, join the network the more storage is pledged to the network, creating a highly scalable, affordable, and distributed storage layer.
Our network is so scalable that we can literally store the on-chain entire history of other blockchains many times over like Polkadot, Ethereum and in the future NEAR, Cosmos, Avalanche, and more. This will unlock many interesting use-cases, including native cross-chain bridge/messaging like Layer Zero
Q5: How do smart contracts work in Subspace?
Unlike other PoC blockchains, Subspace provides a global execution layer for smart contracts, similar to Ethereum. Unlike Ethereum however, the execution is decoupled, or separated, from consensus.
This is mainly done to fully resolve the farmer’s dilemma, although it also allows for pipelining and vertical scaling. This is achieved by creating a new class of nodes, known as executors, who maintain the blockchain state and apply the state transitions for each new block.
It has not yet been decided which smart contract language Subspace will support, though we are aiming to make it configurable for different shards on the network.
That said, Subspace was built to be very modular, similar to Celestia. This means developers could decide to use any stack of our network, whether it is just like a massive storage layer (imagine Audius storing terabytes of songs or CryptoVoxel storing 3D assets of Metaverse). Or protocol designers or rollups could use Subspace as a data availability solution.
Of course one day developers can build their full dapps on Subspace too, but our vision is to empower all dapps across the multi-chain ecosystem
Q6: What is the blockchain trilemma and how does Subspace solve it?
The blockchain trilemma is a term coined by Vitalik Buterin to describe the challenge of creating a scalable, decentralized, and secure blockchain — stating that only two out of these three features may realistically be achieved.
Subspace provides a solution to this problem by combining its own novel consensus algorithm with a host of cutting-edge academic proposals Dr. David Tse, professor at Stanford University has co-authored, which allow for maximizing vertical and horizontal scalability without compromising security or decentralization.
In short, Subspace can achieve massive distribution (security) with its novel consensus model by having millions of consensus node validators, while also being able to handle massive computation requirements thanks to its decoupling of consensus and compute (executor node). From that point of view, it is quite similar to the Flow blockchain.
Okay, let’s talk more about the details from now on.
Q7: When do you plan to launch? Will Subspace have a Token?
I want to start with the premise that none of what we write here is financial advice and make sure to always do your own research.
We currently are at the Testnet phase. At this time, there are no incentives for farming and we regularly introduce breaking changes. We will release a public roadmap soon. To participate as a farmer on our testnet, please visit our GitHub or join our Discord community. We currently have over 20k active nodes run by the community, making Subspace Network one of the most distributed blockchains already.
Subspace Credits (SSC) are the native token of the Subspace Network and already exist on our testnet. SSC is minted by farmers who produce new blocks. SSC will be used to pay storage and compute (gas) feed on the Subspace network, which will vary with the number of farmers and executors on the network.
Subspace is currently compatible with the default Substrate wallet in Polkadot-JS apps and the Polkadot-JS extension, which may be used to transfer tokens earned on our testnet
Subspace is currently compatible with the default Substrate wallet in Polkadot-JS apps and the Polkadot-JS extension, which may be used to transfer tokens earned on our testnet.
Q8: Will Subspace be a para chain on Polkadot or Kusama?
Many users indeed were a bit confused if we are a standalone blockchain or aim to be a para chain because we are pretty involved with the Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem since we are archiving their entire history onto our storage. The short answer is no, Subspace is actually a standalone blockchain network. Our consensus model is too novel. That said it is likely we will get a common good para chain so we can bring a bridging solution to Polkadot/Kusama.
Q9: Can users invest in Subspace as an individual? How?
Again, this is not financial advice.
Not at this time. However, there is likely a community token sale prior to the mainnet launch run by the foundation. The sale will likely have an early batch reserved for early members of our community and those who run a farmer on our incentivized testnet. Prior to a community sale, we will release a token paper with further details. The best way to learn about the token launch is to join our Telegram/Discord groups.
Discord: https://discord.gg/subspace-network
Telegram: https://t.me/subspace_network
Q10: What’s your future plan? Where can we get your latest News?
We will launch a public incentivized testnet in the next few weeks. We also plan to build out an infrastructure portal for the blockchain called Subspace Meta Services (SMS), which will expose a variety of Subspace’s features to web3 builders in a more developer-friendly way, including a unified chain history API, a chain-agnostic NFT storage service, and a cross-chain asset exchange protocol.
For the latest news, please join our Discord community and sign up for our newsletters on our website.
Website: https://subspace.network/
GitHub: https://github.com/subspace
Discord: https://discord.gg/subspace-network
Telegram: https://t.me/subspace_network
Medium: https://medium.com/subspace-network
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NetworkSubspace
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/subspace-blockchain/
Twitter questions
What kind of partnerships with different projects/platforms/protocols can we expect from Subspace Network in the future? Could you give us some examples of how other projects can leverage Subspace Network?
Subspace PoC consensus model provides the benefit of a massively scalable storage layer, similar to AWS S3. With that feature, Subspace is already working with various blockchain parts like Polkadot/Kusama, then Ethereum, and many other chains to store their entire archive history. This makes their network even more decentralized, in addition to enabling cross-chain bridging (similar to Layer Zero). Dapp developers can leverage the storage layer for their apps and roll-ups could use Subspace for data availability (similar to Celestia).
It is unfortunate that some projects remain halfway because their developers abandon the concept because they cannot achieve the desired capitalization in the long run: how do you plan to make this project sustainable for its development?
We are definitely super determined in bringing Subspace to mainnet and way beyond. We have an amazing team of super experienced builders and crypto veterans that have been here for the past 4–5 years. The team token lock up is actually very long, 4 years, to align with the community. Of course, we also raised over $30M recently so we have enough runway for many years to come. The Subspace Network is being developed by Subspace Labs, a team that hails experience from Dapper Labs/Flow, Restream, Protocol Labs, Brave, Stanford, and more.
Let’s say I mint an NFT on Solana, Avalanche, or I don’t know, some protocol. Why would I store it on Subspace instead of the original chain? , what is the advantage?
I personally have advised over 50 NFT projects on Flow blockchain and helped many in their early-stage product ideation phase. The biggest challenge across many layers one blockchains (Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Flow, etc) is that on-chain storage is always their most expensive resource, no matter how scalable their network is. That means it might be cheaper to store an NFT on-chain on Solana vs Ethereum, but it might still cost a lot of money to do so. Subspace was designed with that in mind, so it is likely we can offer the most affordable and robust storage layer across all chains.
How can I contribute to the Subspace Network Ecosystem? Do I have to be an developer for this or can I become a Validator by Staking $SSC?
No, you don’t need to be the only dev to contribute to Subspace, we have an ambassador program you can apply to
Live Q&A
What is our thought process with onboarding other blockchains? How do we convince them that using Subspace will improve their experience with their particular blockchain?
As mentioned by @weileiy The biggest challenge across many layers one blockchains (Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Flow, etc) is that on-chain storage is always their most expensive resource, no matter how scalable their network is. That means it might be cheaper to store an NFT on-chain on Solana vs Ethereum, but it might still cost a lot of money to do so. Subspace was designed with that in mind, so it is likely we can offer the most affordable and robust storage layer across all chains. Using Subspace as their storage solution also could help decentralize their blockchain solution instead of hosting them on central servers.
Regarding the current market situation is too unstable we know such as BTC, BNB, ETH, LUNA and others experienced a very drastic decline, Can you give me some good reasons why I should buy $SSC tokens in this market situation? also why should your token holder keep holding?
Again not financial advice, but the utility of the SSC tokens include the on-chain storage and computation gas, meanwhile, in order to run executor, you also have to stake SSC tokens as a deposit. We understand the current market is unstable but we fully believe the future of web3 is bright.
Where is the Subspace road map now? Are all targets in accordance with the current road map? and what are the next steps that will be taken in the future?
The updated overall roadmap will be released soon, and the next step is our incentivized testnet around the corner in a few weeks.
What are the full ecosystem tools for future identities and data that #Subspace is creating? With this important data, what areas do you hope to develop and decentralize in the future? What are your plans for this?
Subspace is based on the Substrate framework, so we could take advantage of the Polkadot ecosystem tools. We focus on both a scalable storage solution and also smart contract computation, especially NFT and metaverse. We will release the Subspace Meta Service toolkit soon.
How will “Subspace Network” solve the SCABİLİTY problem, how will you prevent the increase in FEES as the network density increases in the future? Also, does the CONSENSUS you use cause any security vulnerability?
As mentioned earlier by Weili, Subspace provides a solution to this problem by combining its own novel consensus algorithm with a host of cutting-edge academic proposals Dr. David Tse, professor at Stanford University has co-authored, which allow for maximizing vertical and horizontal scalability without compromising security or decentralization. More details are coming soon in our academic papers.
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