"Wan Dian Liao" is an online live broadcast series launched by Blocklike, where we will periodically invite the most "eventful" exchanges, trending cryptocurrencies, and influential figures to share and discuss hot topics in the group.

Xiao Wan: Can you briefly introduce yourself? What early interactions did you have with the Polkadot ecosystem?

You An: Hello everyone, I am You An, responsible for domestic market event planning, business connections, and brand promotion at Crust. Crust was one of the earliest projects to join the Polkadot ecosystem. At that time, we already had a concept and model for a storage application and were looking for a good ecological and technical framework.

We considered Ethereum and Cosmos, but their high fees, low TPS, and lack of customizability did not meet our requirements. We found the Web3 Foundation, which was very optimistic about Crust's storage concept, and we were also attracted by the Substrate framework developed by Gavin Wood.

Web3 provided us with a series of technical and financial support. Later, we joined the Substrate Builders Program, received a Web3 Foundation grant, and participated in the first Web3 Bootcamp.

Xiao Wan: Recently, the primary market of the Polkadot ecosystem has been very active, with many projects completing funding intensively. So, how far has Polkadot storage developed at this stage? How do you view its development?

You An: I believe the popularity of the Polkadot ecosystem also stems from more and more users discovering the issues with Ethereum and Bitcoin. Polkadot provides a perfect solution. First of all, Crust is the only storage project within the Polkadot ecosystem. Storage is a necessity in today's digital age, whether for individuals or enterprises.

The storage projects within the Polkadot ecosystem eliminate the need for future cross-chain bridges to use external storage; for the Web3 ecosystem built on Polkadot, data privacy and sovereignty are core visions. However, currently, many blockchain projects have their data stored with centralized off-chain storage providers, which contradicts the Web3 concept. Crust can help these projects achieve true decentralization, so I believe that once the Polkadot parachains are realized, Crust storage will be a highly necessary application.

Xiao Wan: The Polkadot parachain slot auctions are about to begin. What does this mean for Polkadot?

You An: After the Polkadot parachain slot auctions, parachains will officially connect applications, realizing Polkadot's long-standing vision of parachains. This large heterogeneous ecosystem, on-chain governance, and non-fork upgrades are issues that Ethereum 2.0 has been striving to solve. If the parachains run smoothly after being connected, the information exchange between projects will give rise to more useful projects, and more developers will join the Polkadot ecosystem. In the long run, Polkadot may spawn many applications that break out of the blockchain circle, bringing value to users outside the blockchain.

Additionally, the Polkadot slot auctions will involve a large amount of DOT being locked for project slot staking, which will reduce the circulating supply of DOT in the market to some extent. This may also impact the coin price, and more people will pay attention to Polkadot through the slot auctions.

Xiao Wan: Some say "decentralized storage and traditional cloud storage are complementary." What is your view on this perspective?

You An: I believe that those who ask this question should first understand the biggest difference between decentralized storage and centralized storage, or what problems decentralized storage solves for centralized storage.

It is not hard to feel that our data privacy leaks are becoming increasingly serious, and we often face threats of privacy breaches in our lives. Decentralized storage protects users' privacy to the greatest extent possible, using decentralized programs/chains to achieve storage incentives, allowing data to no longer exist on a centralized storage provider's server.

Therefore, for some data that does not require privacy, centralized storage can be chosen at the same price. Of course, when decentralized storage is first launched, the price will definitely be cheaper than centralized storage, and then it will gradually level out in the future.

So I think this statement is very correct. Any new application that comes out is not meant to kill off past applications; it is to provide users with more choices. Just like when Didi Chuxing came out, traditional taxis still exist. In many small and medium-sized cities, Didi is not applicable, and traditional taxis remain mainstream. Traditional taxis even cooperate with Didi, allowing users to call traditional taxis through the Didi app.

Xiao Wan: We know that Crust is a blockchain protocol developed based on the Polkadot Substrate framework, providing a distributed storage network under the Web 3 framework. Can you briefly introduce your project? What is your biggest advantage compared to other storage projects?

You An: Crust adopts the MPOW+GPOS mechanism, which I believe are two excellent designs and the biggest highlights of Crust.

The first highlight is the TEE local proof method, which makes our node proof of work and data packaging faster and more efficient. This is a critical advantage for an application project. Compared to the extensive cryptographic calculations of FIL, the workload of Crust nodes is meaningful.

Meaningful Proof of Work (MPoW) is the node's proof of work mechanism, which, like PoW, is based on the core principle of "more work, more rewards," reflecting fairness. However, the essential difference from PoW is that the workload of the nodes is meaningful, which greatly lowers the threshold for our nodes. As long as you have a computer with TEE functionality and provide storage space, you can become a storage node in the Crust network.

The second highlight is the GPoS consensus, which solves the incentive problem for Crust storage nodes. In the Crust network, each node has a staking quota corresponding to the storage space it provides. The more storage provided, the higher the staking quota. The node's earnings are calculated based on the staking amount, and nodes do not need to buy tokens for upfront collateral when mining in the Crust network.

Nodes can accept collateral from other token holders, which greatly reduces mining costs. Unlike other projects, we do not deeply bind miners, and our node rewards are distributed in real-time without needing to be locked. Another advantage of GPoS is that all token holders can participate in the Crust network to stake for nodes and earn rewards. This design is inspired by Polkadot and can promote a virtuous cycle of the entire ecosystem's tokens.

Xiao Wan: Some previous distributed storage projects used super nodes and centralized guarantee nodes to coordinate the relationship between resources and users. What is the difference between your node storage proof mechanism and that of other projects?

You An: Crust uses TEE hardware for local proof at the nodes.

TEE exists in the hard drives of Crust nodes and provides two main functions in the entire storage service:

1. Reporting node workload. The TEE module periodically checks whether the node is functioning properly and whether there are any errors in storing user data, then uploads the workload report to the chain.

2. Privacy protection. TEE, as an industrial-grade mature technology, is being used by many mainstream manufacturers for data encryption. For users' sensitive data, TEE's encryption ensures that storage nodes cannot read users' privacy.

Crust uses this engineering solution. While it may not be as academically elegant as zero-knowledge proofs and other solutions, it can solve problems more efficiently and pragmatically.

Xiao Wan: We learned that your project has recently been integrated as a parachain into the Polkadot testnet Rococo V1. What is the current progress of your project? What role does it play in the Polkadot ecosystem?

You An: Our team was established in 2018, and we have joined the Substrate Builders Program and participated in the first Web3 Bootcamp. We also received a Web3 Foundation grant very early on.

After two years of development and testing, on November 30 of last year, Crust launched the incentive testnet Ark plan, starting to lay out for miners and nodes. The Ark plan ran smoothly for 50 days, with nodes spread across 16 countries globally, reaching a maximum of 1001 nodes. The total storage capacity of the testnet reached 94PB. Our Ark plan daily report was also actively retweeted by Gavin Wood on Twitter.

On February 4 of this year, the Maxwell preview network officially launched, operating in the same way as the mainnet and will continue for two years. Crust has opened the role of collateral for token holders for the first time because, under the GPoS consensus mechanism, node mining does not require buying tokens for collateral.

Nodes can set a profit-sharing ratio and accept collateral from any token holder in the Crust network. So now all CRU token holders can earn rewards by providing collateral for nodes on the Maxwell network. Additionally, Crust network salaries are distributed immediately without needing to be unlocked.

Furthermore, another significant progress we made was opening the storage function on February 28, meaning all users can now store, retrieve, and transfer files through the Crust network.

This is a significant milestone in the application landing process of Crust. Of course, we are still continuously monitoring for bugs and product trials. One of our main market tasks this year is to expand the application side of Crust. We will encourage enterprises and developers, including retail investors, to organize hackathons and developer grants.

Xiao Wan: As more people join the distributed storage ecosystem, there may be some confidential and sensitive data on the platform. Will you face scrutiny and regulatory risks? How will you address this?

You An: Yes, this question has been raised a long time ago.

In fact, as a storage incentive protocol, Crust is focused on the act of storage itself; our clients should be storage providers serving a wide range of users. This may sound abstract.

For example, if Crust grows stronger and becomes well-known, and Baidu Cloud finds that using Crust for storage is more economical than purchasing its own storage servers, it may upload all user data to the Crust network. In this case, the issues of data scrutiny and regulation should be resolved by Baidu Cloud. You can think of Crust as a giant storage hard drive, while the content of the data should be regulated by the application providers.