ETHCC Convos: How Aleph Plans to Enhance Decentralization at the Infra Layer w/ Johnathan Malawach

Transcript

foreign protocol that lets you build crushing applications and experiences in a secure way Rob and I really enjoyed their Tech because they don't add any new security assumptions on top of the connected change as they don't rely on an external validator set or an oracle security is definitely Paramount in D5 so we're excited to work with connects hope you enjoy this video what's going on guys I'm here today with John the founder of alef.im John first day of ECC it's actually my first interview here today feels great to be back truly it's a it's a magical

experience being in Paris and being at ECC this year is huge how you feeling day one how how's everything going well it's pretty great like like all the venues are packed there is a lot of people and a lot of Builders actually which is really great like we feel that it's the center of the future of France literally the future of France here we are yeah and I mean what we've been building in D5 for the past couple years is is trying to build this new this new system of of finance and you know we really came quite quite a long way um you know so before we jump into that I'd just love to hear a bit about your

your background how you gotten in involved and kind of the uh the beginning of I left I am well um at start I'm mostly a developer so like I was trying to like dip my toes into web free which wasn't called the web free back then uh more like into crypto and stuff like that and I was going and it was mostly about money but there wasn't only money like we needed to like desilo the web and that's what what decentralization should be about and when I started to like try to do big application like like let's say a decentralized Twitter I couldn't because

we needed some kind of better tool set and that's how I left at am was born um I I have been doing consulting for bigger banks for like iot stuff in the past so I'm mostly a developer and also an entrepreneur because I started a few startup before crypto as well interesting yeah it's always interesting to me to hear from different backgrounds about how folks got into D5 um you know there's tons of different technological backgrounds there's folks from tradify um you know early adopters of crypto overall just entrepreneurs and Builders so great to hear that you know your background is quite well-rounded now to

kind of the pressing problem that we're facing in D5 and don't get me wrong here I'm not trying to make it seem like we haven't accomplished quite a bit in D5 but the D in D5 is still we're still missing that kind of ultimate decentralization aspect right you know there's always a question of how decentralized can you really get you know you know there's always a limit to this cut this type of of thing and I I feel like right now with the infrastructure stack that's kind of a big bottleneck for the decentralization of the trying D5 so what is your walk us through kind of your mental model for um the infrastructural stack currently in D5 some of the problems that we're facing

um that kind of are that are a a choke point for that decentralization aspect well um we are trying to like use the web which is something that hasn't been designed for that to use it in a decentralized way I mean it has been designed to be decentralized but lately we have had a lot of silos like AWS Google Cloud Etc everyone uses the cloud well the cloud seems decentralized because you have data centers all around the world but it's all under the control of a few specific entities and if your D5 project runs on AWS well AWS can't cut it down whenever they want or they can get an

order to do so or they could get an order to like change the files that are being served to like the users which is really problematic for decentralization so you can't really say that the protocol is totally decentralized if all the back end all the website that you use to like interact with it is is like served by centralized servers or a centralized cloud yeah and that's kind of the key infrastructural part right because as you're saying the the internet as a whole uh it hasn't been designed to be a transactional layer for for uh you know any type of of of decentralized uh kind of financial or monetary Primitives it's

really just been like an informational packet of data right and so now we put these applications online where there's a lot of money at stake and we're you know you're still reliant on AWS as as you're saying or different types of cloud providers so do you feel that this is kind of one of the uh most important uh challenges that the overall defy ecosystem is facing right now yeah well I think so because um if someone can have a direct control on your defae project um if okay you might have a dow for like all the fund and smart contract but if you're front-end there is people who have SSH Keys into the servers and can

change it that's problematic same in like a lot of cases if there are humans that have direct access to it then it's not decentralized you would need your doubt to be able to like directly set what the front end is uh you need to have your doubt to be in charge of your infrastructure and that's where there is a blocking Point big because the way the centralized web is done is that you need to have access to one server it can be on the cloud it can be in your basement if you want it but it's still one computer yeah yeah and I mean I I totally agree I think this is something that on the infrastructure layer we're going to

start to see um a lot more teams you know build and try to create solutions to this problem because you know it's it seems like it's only a matter of time until we actually have a serious issue with this and you know as an entire Community we want to be able to be ahead of that and so that's kind of what you guys are building now so kind of walk walk me through how you feel uh alif.im is a solution to this overarching problem what kind of infrastructure tooling are you guys building um you know and what's the thesis for for the overall project well um as I said we were I was trying to like build a bigger application like and and I like couldn't so what was lacking

uh we needed storage like in file storage because you need to be able to like serve Statics for your application but not only uh most websites are databases so like IM also provides a decentralized database akin to Firebase for those who know what it is and then we we now also offer Computing serverless Computing a bit like what Amazon Lambda provides but in a decentralized way when you access a website um it will find one server on the red dotam Network that will answer and and then this server will launch virtual machine launcher code then get your results back what we will also release

in the coming days are the instances which are quite interesting because you can have direct accessed one instance with an SSH key and and then put whatever your code you want inside the good part is that you can also create it with specific code from a dial if you wanted as I was saying and we will also have confidential Computing coming later this year meaning that those VMS will be able to hold private keys in a really secure way this way you could have your oracles or whatever running on the laptop Network writing on chain and no one could see what is happening and also it can be proven that that the code that is running is really the one that you want to be running and with all

that we have all the PCS to be able to replace AWS for the back end of D5 projects so so that D5 project can say yes we are really decentralized our backend our databases or whatever we are using is really decentralized our front-end is really decentralized and like here is how and here are all the cryptographical proofs yeah yeah so some sort of combination within IPS ipfs front end which we've seen on a lot of D5 apps nowadays you know when you click on the button that says uh go to app there's often a pop-up that says you are now leaving you know this this website you're going to an ipfs based um site and you know there's regulatory

reasons behind that but there's also data um and kind of decentralized decentralization reasons and then on top of that you can have alif that I am running in the back end and that's about as decentralized of an infrastructure stack as we can get now with alif DOT a with alif.im is it compatible with um evm adapts is it compatible with other layer one dapps what's the kind of interoperability and compatibility for Integrations uh look like on your side well um on our Network we accept messages uh like every kind of action on the network is a message just like there are transactions on ethereum we have messages or messages are like database entries requests to like store data

request to forget data which is important due to regulatory reasons notably in Europe with gdpr um you can also create a virtual machine a launch a process all that are messages those messages can either come from unchain from our contracts we call that a reverse Oracle because our Network looks at ethereum and gets and creates a message on the network or signed by a private key directly and for that we support addresses of like all evm chains um the reversal records are deployed on ethereum mainnet binance Smart chain polygon now and a few others we also

support tesos and we have that reverse Oracle on tesos we support all Cosmos SDK chain all polkadot substrate chains we also support Solana and many others yeah so totally agnostic with your preferences which allows you to really scale and kind of build build something that isn't a Maximus focused and this conversation is is really bringing me back to a podcast that we just had with Brian from uh layer zero labs they do Omni chain messaging not exactly the same as as what you guys are doing but when you describe how the uh how the transactions and blockchain works of alif it's hard for me not to bring that kind of comparison and just that that

same thought process of not caring where your infrastructure is being deployed but just knowing that your interest infrastructure is decentralized it's just Restless it's censorship resistant and it can improve the decentralization of any one of these chains or dapps built on these chains you know that's how you kind of reach that that larger scale vision of being able to be that kind of uh let's say decentralized infrastructure for a true decentralized default um now as far as the a0 token goes does the staking of that token or any tokenomics help to secure the storage of the network of the data of the network kind of how does how does that play into the uh to the current picture well

um so our token is the RF token azero is from lf0 which my apologies no worries uh which is a layer one uh so like the alif token there there is multiple utilities to it the main utilities to pay for storage and Computing currently you just heard the alif tokens to get storage in Computing uh what we will have down the line later this year early next year will will be that will be able to spend those tokens as well if you prefer and and I continuously stream tokens tool director like your Hardware from alpha that's Alpha guys um and then

um when you provide computers like because you can have one in your basement you could pay overage scale away AWS who whoever you want and then host alif nodes and get paid so for that we have multiple kind of node would the first one which are the core chain node which are akin to validators on our systems where you need to hold 200 000 RF to create it and then have 500 000 I'll have stayed on it for it to start and then the stickers gain tokens because they are the one that are controlling uh all the controllers of the network because because the cartoon and not are those that are in charge of controlling the network verifying that everyone is doing their job and managing

the database of messages as well and then we have the Computing resource nodes which are doing the actual work of computing like running all those virtual machine Etc currently it's CPU but there will be GPU support as well down the line uh and then we also have the storage resource node that are also coming in not that long and those storage node will mostly provides file storage like currently we already have file storage but it's on the other node and we're a specific kind of note for that and then if you run a Computing resource node um car Channel need to vote for you and then you start getting paid

interesting so a different incentive designs that allow the network to run in the most efficient manner possible uh you know while also you know keeping the community the holders um you know engaged earning rewards and a part of the broader community and that's one thing that I've actually noticed big time with the aleph.im community and the Isle of zero is that it's it's massive on Twitter it's huge in in telegram it's huge on Discord um there's uh there's this kind of energy and this community that is fostered what can you kind of comment on on how the marketing and the community leads um you know have have built and you know what what kind of words can you

give to the community who are watching well um honestly uh we really love our community uh people are really active they are talking a lot about what we are doing Etc we have a lot of node owners in the community uh node operators as well and well I am really happy to like have them all and we are always searching for new node operators new community members talking about the project Etc yeah yeah I mean I've definitely noticed it so you guys are doing you guys are doing something right there and um keep making the noise and I appreciate the uh the alpha as well guys you guys got some good good roadmap

items coming up for our community as well um and I guess last but not least where can our uh our community find you and also find um the uh the broader Olive Community well you can find us on telegram on our alif IM group on telegram um on Twitter Andre I am account as well um that's the main places and on our website as well cool well thank you so much for the time and um I hope you have a great rest of your ECC o yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah same for you thank you very very very very very very much Andy thank you cheers