Plug-and-play with zero threshold, "Deeper Network" builds the network infrastructure for the Web 3 era

Author: Ben

Various controversial topics about Web3 are emerging one after another, even more so than the metaverse.

On one hand, there are shocking large-scale financings disclosed by Web3 companies, while on the other hand, traditional tech giants are filled with endless ridicule.

On February 19, Web3 distributed wireless communication company Helium Inc. announced the completion of a $200 million Series D financing, with a valuation of $1.2 billion. This round of financing was led by Tiger Global and a16z, with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures), Liberty Global (including Virgin Media & Vodafone), and Deutsche Telekom's Telekom Innovation Pool.

In April, Web3 security company CertiK completed an $88 million Series B3 financing, with a total financing amount of $230 million and a valuation of $2 billion. The investment was jointly made by top investment institutions including Insight Partners, Tiger Global, Advent International, Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed. The company has completed four rounds of financing in the past nine months.

Although Musk often ridicules Web3 in tandem with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, he cannot help but publicly support Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Jack Dorsey even founded a startup called Block focused on payments, directly establishing a separate entity for Web5.

Setting aside the dazzling names and terms, it can be observed that in the world of Web3, many companies that have received large-scale financing from leading institutions are actually doing grounded work.

Recently, 36Kr contacted a North America-based Web3 startup, Deeper Network. Its latest generation Web3 network security hardware, Deeper Connect Pico, has been crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo since the end of 2021, with over 12,000 supporters and nearly $3.8 million in sales.

Deeper Connect Pico is already its fourth-generation product. For a company founded in 2018, especially one focused on network security hardware, the iteration speed is indeed very fast.

Deeper Network is a rising star in the overseas Web3 field, with its technical team located in Silicon Valley, USA, and most core members coming from leading cybersecurity and internet companies. The team aims to revolutionize the existing internet ecosystem at the network infrastructure level with next-generation cybersecurity technology, and has already gained market attention with a series of distinctive security hardware.

Recently, the Stanford-Harvard-MIT Entrepreneurship Competition's Western US regional finals concluded, and Deeper Network stood out from 38 participating teams, ultimately winning first place in the finals. At Consensus 2022 held in Austin, USA, Deeper Network won second place among nearly a hundred participating projects in the "Future Technology Competition (Web3 Pitch Fest)."

"Since 2018, the original intention of our founding team has been to build the next generation of a trusted internet. At that time, very few people truly understood the concept of Web3.0, and we had already proposed that Deeper would use our technology to help every internet user become a builder of the next generation internet infrastructure and the owner of their data sovereignty," Deeper Network co-founder and CEO Cheryl told 36Kr. "And now, there is no doubt that Web3.0 has become the latest direction of the internet era. After years of refinement, our products and network have matured. We have established a secure shared network with over 70,000 nodes globally. The Deeper Connect products not only greatly improve users' internet access experience, but they are also a key component of our Web3.0 infrastructure. The more users use our products, the stronger the Deeper Web3.0 infrastructure becomes, which can provide users with more powerful functions. Through this positive feedback effect, we will ultimately establish the world's largest Web3.0 infrastructure."

Deeper Network's core technologies include AtomOS, Trident Protocol, and NPoW consensus.

AtomOS is the world's first lock-free network security operating system, designed with performance, reliability, and security in mind. The Trident Protocol is a decentralized, shared communication protocol that uses blockchain technology to negotiate node handshakes, protect data transmission, maximize network bandwidth utilization, and minimize data transmission latency.

At the same time, Deeper Network has launched the next-generation proof of work mechanism, NPoW (Next-gen Proof of Work). The NPoW consensus mechanism is not only more environmentally friendly and practical than the PoW consensus mechanism used by Bitcoin, but it is also more decentralized. Based on this, Deeper Network has successively launched four generations of Deeper Connect products.

Deeper Network co-founder and CTO Russell told 36Kr that the enhancement of network security functions is endless. As the saying goes, "the higher the level, the greater the challenge." With the continuous emergence of new security products, threats are also emerging one after another, especially unknown threats. The Web3 era requires new security designs and products.

Deeper Network is the world's first to propose and adopt a decentralized network security defense mechanism. Through a全民皆兵 (everyone is a soldier) network security response model, it can maximize the protection of network security in the Web3.0 world. In addition, the first generation of Deeper Connect products has built a decentralized edge computing platform, allowing third-party developers to program various nodes through smart contracts on the platform and nodes to complete edge computing tasks. By combining network security technology with edge computing, more applications can be moved from expensive data centers to edge nodes, greatly improving the response speed of network applications without sacrificing security, while significantly reducing the deployment costs of network applications.

Russell has previously served as a development manager and chief engineer at tech companies such as Intel, Fortinet, and Palo Alto Networks, with over ten years of experience in network security and over 20 years in operating system development.

Deeper Network's second-generation product, Deeper Connect, was launched in 2020 and was nominated by Parity to participate in the Substrate Builder program. At the same time, Deeper won the highest funding from the Web3 Foundation and officially became a member of the program in 2021, successfully joining the Polkadot ecosystem. In the recently concluded Polkadot Hackathon, the Deeper Network Eclipse team won both the runner-up in the finals and the Community Favorite Award.

The company's other co-founder, Cheryl, has a firm belief: Deeper Network will build a more solid and reliable Web3 infrastructure, seamlessly and painlessly migrating global internet users to the Web3.0 world. Currently, Deeper Network has over 70,000 global nodes, widely distributed in over 150 countries, and is experiencing exponential growth every quarter.