Exclusive Interview with Metaplex: Beyond NFTs, How Metaplex Became the Cornerstone of Solana's Ecosystem Development?

Author: Jack, BlockBeats

Since April this year, several crypto funds, including Pantera Capital, have begun to purchase a large number of MPLX tokens from Wave Digital Assets, an entity related to FTX. Prior to this, multiple institutions had publicly stated that they were acquiring MPLX tokens. After the announcement of a new protocol buyback mechanism in March, the fundamentals and long-term potential of Metaplex began to attract the attention of investors. As Metaplex continues to expand in the infrastructure sector, its irreplaceability and growth potential within the Solana ecosystem have made $MPLX an asset that institutions view as severely undervalued. With the recent announcement of Aura Network, the price of $MPLX has also started to rise gradually.

This "ecological veteran" of Solana, launched in 2021, is now returning to the spotlight with a new ecological position and excellent fundamental data. However, this time, it aims to do more than just NFTs. During this year's Token2049 event, BlockBeats sat down for an in-depth interview with Stephen Hess, chairman of the Metaplex Foundation, to discuss his personal crypto career, Metaplex's past and current experiences and thoughts, as well as the future ambitions of the new product Aura Network.

Origin Story: Mentougou, Solana, Metaplex

Like many founders in the crypto industry, Stephen's blockchain journey began with an interest in information technology. While studying at Stanford University, Stephen started to learn about Bitcoin and the potential of distributed ledgers. In his view, decentralized systems are an inevitable evolutionary direction for today's digital technology, and future business and finance will inevitably shift from centralized systems to peer-to-peer networks. In this transition, these systems will ultimately empower individuals and promote the development of autonomy.

In 2013, Stephen purchased his first Bitcoin on Mt. Gox. Shortly after, he quit his job at a tech company to try day trading in the cryptocurrency space. However, Stephen, who always focused on product development, did not intend to become a full-time crypto trader. At that time, he faced a significant career choice: stay in the tech health industry working on AI research or go all-in on the cryptocurrency industry. Interestingly, due to his attention to product details, Stephen quickly noticed serious issues with the Mt. Gox platform shortly after he started trading there and quickly moved his funds, becoming one of the few investors to avoid the Mt. Gox collapse. However, due to not having the "passive lock-up" buff, he sold a significant amount of Bitcoin to cover personal taxes, missing out on the subsequent massive price increase.

In 2020, Stephen was approached by his former colleague in the tech health field, Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana Labs, who invited him to join his team. This period was on the eve of Solana's underlying technology being proven and heavily promoted for application. For Stephen, who loves product development, this was undoubtedly a perfect job. Thus, he became the first product manager at Solana Labs as the head of the product department. Later, Stephen co-founded Metaplex, experiencing both the Solana summer and the FTX collapse. Reflecting on his crypto career, Stephen summarizes: "In the highly volatile field of cryptocurrency, what seems like a disaster at the moment often turns out to be the biggest opportunity."

BlockBeats: Where did your crypto career begin?

Stephen: In the early stages of my career, I hesitated between fully committing to cryptocurrency or pursuing a career in AI-focused healthcare. Around 2014, I started emailing many cryptocurrency founders to ask if they needed designers, product managers, or engineers. At that time, I was also very interested in the AI/healthcare career path, and interestingly, that was what brought me back to the cryptocurrency field. My thought was simple: if I found the right team, I would absolutely join and do whatever was needed. Working at Solana Labs was just that for me; I designed product suites, ecosystem charts, participated in the first staking pool contract, designed the first UI for Wormhole, helped write the first NFT and token standards, and launched Metaplex, among other things.

At that time, I mainly contacted large projects like Ripple and Stellar, but since I couldn't find the right position, I returned to the healthcare industry after coming back from South America. I worked as a product designer at Stride Health, responsible for building a health insurance marketplace, then joined Atomic Labs to develop disease management software for breast cancer patients, and later joined Omada Health.

While at Omada Health, I worked for Raj, and Eric Williams was the head of data science at the time. When they left Omada to found Solana, Eric designed Solana's token economic model, and I soon joined Solana Labs as a product lead.

BlockBeats: How did Raj invite you to join the Solana team?

Stephen: At that time, we were helping the company build a system for training medical models, especially to build machine learning models based on the data we generated. To ensure the quality of the training data, we needed to diversify the data, so we needed clinicians to occasionally provide some "random suggestions," like going for a walk or recommending new recipes. However, since people were quite conservative at that time, this was difficult to implement in the healthcare field.

Raj, Eric, and I were all working hard to promote AI in this field, firmly believing it was the trend of the future. Although Omada has achieved significant success today, we did face many setbacks at that time, so Raj and Eric began to look for a field with fewer restrictions, and cryptocurrency happened to provide that creative freedom. So they left the company and co-founded Solana with Anatoly.

I remember Raj telling me, "I don't have a job title for you right now, but we have a table; come work with us." At that time, Solana was still in its early stages, and it took me a while to officially join them. When I joined, they had already been operating for a year or two. But I clearly remember that they initially worked above a mall in downtown San Francisco with just a few folding tables, and now Solana has developed into a global community.

The Solana office opened in New York City in May 2023, image source: Decrypt

BlockBeats: What ultimately made you decide to join the Solana team?

Stephen: I think this was my "second chance" to seek work in the crypto field early in my career. I believe it is very important for individuals to conduct digital transactions and conduct business, and that commerce and finance will gradually shift to peer-to-peer and decentralized systems. In my view, technology is certainly progressing, and the key is that you must strike a good short-term offensive while keeping an eye on the long-term vision; this is the difference between strategy and tactics.

BlockBeats: If you had chosen to stay in the healthcare industry at that time, would you still consider entering the now well-developed crypto industry today?

Stephen: Absolutely. I am a very patient person; I don't get too anxious about small progress each year but rather look to the future, thinking about developments ten, twenty, or even a hundred years down the line. One of my important tasks as part of this field is to develop the business steadily in line with market pace, avoiding blind expansion. A common problem among many entrepreneurs is that they rush to invest too much when the market is not ready, which often ends in failure. If they could be more patient, grounded, and persistent, the chances of success would be much greater.

It is important to clarify that I care a lot about small improvements each year. It's just about understanding where you are in the technology adoption lifecycle, rather than rushing into the mainstream when the underlying infrastructure has not yet formed. This means finding more highly differentiated specialized use cases and then planning a route to achieve the ultimate vision.

Looking back at history, many once-glorious trading platforms, whether Mt. Gox or BitFenix, no longer exist today. In the cryptocurrency field, excessive optimism and a short-sighted mentality often lead to wasted resources and unrealistic expectations, which can ultimately harm the team and the community.

For us, the establishment of Metaplex is for long-term planning, aiming to create an unbreakable long-term project. I advise every entrepreneur to have this long-term mindset: success requires focus, diligence, and patience, which in itself is a huge advantage.

BlockBeats: How did you go on to found Metaplex?

Stephen: When I first joined the Solana team, they had already proven the core foundation of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), which remains the most efficient execution environment in decentralized state machines. The SVM enables state transitions to occur efficiently and at scale in a decentralized manner, thereby opening up a new generation of application scenarios and use cases.

From the very beginning, I focused on end-to-end product design and development. In the early stages, I had the opportunity to participate in the development of Stake Pools, which later evolved into liquid staking, and it has now become a key component of the Solana ecosystem, with many excellent projects revolving around it. I also worked on governance, particularly SPL governance, supporting tools like Realms and Squads. Additionally, I was involved in the development of Wormhole during the incubation phase at Solana Labs.

I was also a member of the team for the first version of the NFT standard, which eventually evolved into Metaplex. Over the past few years, I have been helping to lead Metaplex while also contributing to the development of Solana, helping it become the preferred platform for Web3 developers. As a product developer, this was a perfect opportunity, as this infrastructure innovation allowed Solana to build new products and services across various markets.

Solana's "Ecological Index": NFTs, but More Than NFTs

Metaplex was founded at the end of 2021, during the peak of Solana's NFT summer. As the designer of the main NFT standard in the Solana ecosystem, Metaplex became the "behind-the-scenes creator" of the NFT market, with its valuation rising alongside the ecosystem.

In January 2022, Metaplex received $46 million in strategic investment from institutions including Multicoin, Jump, and Alameda. However, with the collapse of FTX, the Solana ecosystem was severely impacted, and the Metaplex team was also affected. By the end of the year, Stephen announced the company's layoffs on Twitter, stating, "Although our financial situation was not directly affected by the FTX collapse, the indirect impact on the market is significant, requiring us to take a more conservative approach moving forward."

But Metaplex did not stop moving forward; what seemed like a disaster often turns out to be the biggest opportunity. A year later, Solana was reborn, and Metaplex returned to the stage, but this time, it aimed to do more than just NFTs.

The Behind-the-Scenes Creator of NFT Summer

In May 2022, the Solana network experienced another outage, and the Metaplex team quickly stated via official Twitter that the network downtime was primarily due to its Candy Machine program's crawler, and they soon deployed a bot punishment program for that program to stabilize the network.

"Candy Machines" are a set of development programs launched by Metaplex that allow creators to flexibly mint tokens and distribute them to their communities. Its V3 version introduced an integrated program that allows people to mint NFTs through SOL, tokens, and burning. The subsequent Bubblegum is an extension of this program, mainly providing solutions for "compressed NFTs."

Looking back at 2021, Metaplex single-handedly supported the golden age of Solana NFTs. From early independent communities to the explosive NFT Launchpad Magic Eden, almost every NFT asset has Metaplex's shadow behind it. Even Stephen openly stated that the NFT wave had significant importance for Metaplex's growth, "That period was incredibly meaningful for us, especially during the Candy Machine era, where the generation of thousands of PFP projects helped Solana establish its own ecological social layer, forming the foundation for the community scale we see today."

Comparison of trading volumes in the Ethereum and Solana NFT markets. Despite a significant overall decline in the NFT market, Solana NFTs have shown greater resilience; data source: Dune

BlockBeats: How did Metaplex identify and seize the opportunities in the Solana NFT market?

Stephen: It all started with those Ethereum NFT creators who actively reached out to us. They were dissatisfied with the existing platforms. At that time, platforms like Nifty Gateway were the primary means of issuing NFTs on Ethereum, but creators always faced issues like delays and slow payments, which prevented them from quickly bringing their projects to market.

Metaplex's starting point was that individual creators could connect directly with their fans and audiences. So our first product was an open-source NFT store that anyone could deploy and host NFTs like using WordPress. After that, we launched the Candy Machine program, which became our killer feature.

Candy Machine experienced the ideal situation that all early product developments hope for: after its release, there was huge demand for Candy Machine, and we were racing against user demand almost every week, striving to keep up with the evolution and demand of the market. We experienced a series of significant releases, such as Degen Ape and Aurory, with multiple multi-million dollar NFT projects being launched through Metaplex's Candy Machine almost every week for an entire year.

BlockBeats: But most NFTs were released and promoted on Magic Eden at that time. Metaplex itself did not gain much recognition. Did you feel that you were "giving up" market share to Magic Eden? If you could do it again, would you consider launching Metaplex's own NFT issuance platform?

Stephen: Magic Eden built an incredible platform for creators and collectors and gradually grew into one of the most successful dApps in the entire cryptocurrency field. In fact, Magic Eden's launchpad was also built using Metaplex's Candy Machine technology. They used the same technology but branded it and integrated it into their marketplace platform, and their early growth played an important role in our growth. I don't particularly like hypothetical questions because when you're in the moment, you can never know exactly how things will unfold. We are clearly very satisfied with where Metaplex is now and the achievements we've made.

Ultimately, I think the answer is no; we would not build our own issuance platform. What has given us strength and momentum over the years is our commitment to developers and creating value for applications built on our protocol. If applications built on Metaplex can generate far more value and profit than we do, that is the most strategically meaningful thing we can do for long-term success. The success of developers is our success.

BlockBeats: Has the Metaplex protocol generated revenue through Magic Eden?

Stephen: Of course. The Metaplex protocol generates revenue by charging fees on application income, and all this data is publicly disclosed. 50% of the protocol revenue is used to purchase $MPLX, which is then contributed to our DAO for community grants, while the other 50% supports the non-profit operations of the foundation. The foundation has no shareholders or investors; its sole goal is to promote the future development of the DAO and the Metaplex protocol.

BlockBeats: After observing a round of NFT bull markets, what do you think is the key to the success of NFT projects?

Stephen: I believe that ultimately, the key to a successful NFT project lies in whether it can find a community connected by shared values or interests. The measure of success should not only be market capitalization or trading volume but also whether the project can cultivate a meaningful community around these shared interests.

In fact, one of the best practices for an NFT project is to break free from excessive focus on price; instead, the emphasis should be on finding and screening individuals who truly align with the community's goals. Many NFT projects make the mistake of overly relying on whale investors, which can have negative effects. When the market declines, you may lose those core members who genuinely care about the project's mission. Therefore, building around a strong and actively engaged community is key to long-term success.

BlockBeats: Do you think NFTs are over? If not, where is their future?

Stephen: I believe that profile picture NFTs (PFPs) are the first real breakthrough for decentralized social networks. Many people ask when decentralized social networks will arrive, and I believe they have already been realized through NFTs. Projects like MadLads, Solana Monkey Business, and Cyber Frogz are true communities with teams developing products and hosting events daily, providing social opportunities for crypto users.

Currently, these communities are very successful in attracting users who work full-time in the crypto industry. The next big challenge is whether they can break through the limitations of the crypto industry and expand outward. NFTs have strong organizational capabilities within the crypto industry, but the success rate of creating communities outside the industry is still low. I think this is the next key challenge for such NFT projects.

On the other hand, meme coins are also a continuation of this trend------in our view, they are also on-chain communities. We recently launched a framework called MPL-404, designed for hybrid NFT projects (token conversions, such as DeGods and Mutantmon). This standard combines the advantages of meme coins and NFT images, with meme coins providing a broader distribution channel through trading platforms, making it easier for users to access liquidity and capital, while NFTs offer unique value through online experiences or offline events.

I believe this trend will continue to be an important theme. I want to emphasize that decentralized social networks have arrived------they have been built on Solana and Metaplex, and we believe this will become the social foundation driving the next generation of applications.

"Ecological Index"

On September 9, The Block reported that several crypto funds, including Pantera and ParaFi, purchased a large number of $MPLX tokens from Wave Digital Assets. These tokens were originally held by the FTX estate, and over the past five months, 65.1 million of the 72.6 million MPLX held by FTX have been sold, leaving 7.5 million remaining. As of September 19, 2024, the entire initial allocation of MPLX has been fully vested and unlocked.

The large-scale off-market redistribution of MPLX tokens marks the end of a stabilization phase influenced by FTX. After a year of solidifying its foundation, Metaplex has returned to the market's view with a new posture, and under the narrative that increasingly values profitability and application scenarios, it has once again become a sought-after asset among institutions.

A few days ago, Stephen, chairman of the Metaplex Foundation, posted on X, showcasing the economic activities and benefits created by Metaplex as a protocol for the Solana ecosystem. Since its launch in 2021, Metaplex has facilitated over $5.5 billion in on-chain economic activity, covering tens of millions of wallet addresses within the ecosystem. During the meme frenzy at the beginning of the year, Metaplex generated $12 million in protocol revenue through Pump.fun.

On the other hand, according to the existing buyback policy, since June 2024, Metaplex has been able to buy back approximately $10,000 worth of MPLX each month. As of August 2024, the total value of the repurchased MPLX reached approximately $30,000 SOL, accounting for over 3% of Metaplex's market capitalization, becoming an important and stable force in reshaping the circulating supply.

All of this stems from Stephen and his team's vision for Metaplex. They believe that Metaplex is not just an NFT development program; it aims to be the technical cornerstone of the Solana ecosystem's development.

Related Reading: 《Quietly Dominating Solana's Cash Flow, Why is $MPLX Undervalued?》

Accumulated economic activities and fees generated by the Metaplex protocol, image source: Stephen (@meta_hess)

BlockBeats: If we compare the industrial ecological position of the traditional internet, can we understand Metaplex as the technical database of the Solana ecosystem?

Stephen: I believe one of the core components of the Metaplex protocol is the digital asset standards and the ability to create and manage digital assets, and its importance is indeed similar to database technology. However, our goal is not limited to this; we focus on building a fully integrated full-stack tool for developers, allowing them not only to deploy digital asset protocols but also to develop complete end-to-end applications.

BlockBeats: Metaplex has generated about $12 million in revenue through Pump.fun in the past few months. Can you talk about how this collaboration started?

Stephen: We actually did not establish a formal partnership with them; they built an engaging product using our development tools. Pump.fun mainly uses Metaplex's token metadata program and some SDKs. Every time a user creates a meme coin through Pump.fun, they are essentially using Metaplex's token infrastructure.

In both the Magic Eden Launchpad and Pump.fun cases, applications are charged a small fee each time they use our protocol to create new NFTs or FTs, which is the source of revenue for the Metaplex protocol. Our philosophy is to charge a small fee at the time of asset creation and use these protocol fees to develop support and promote the development tools and on-chain programs for these standards.

Our goal is to support hundreds or even thousands of applications built using our tools. Our tool design is open-source, and anyone can use our SDK and development tools to build. We also provide detailed documentation and have community development teams supporting on Discord. We encourage developers from the Chinese community to join us, and if they have questions, they can participate in discussions at any time.

BlockBeats: What is the fee structure for Metaplex?

Stephen: For each new token created, we charge a fee of 0.01 SOL for token metadata minting and 0.0015 SOL for Core minting. Half of this fee is used to purchase MPLX tokens, which are then contributed to the DAO. This makes us one of the few protocols with a sustainable and lasting revenue model, and this revenue model is directly tied to the DAO.

Metaplex library (MPL) fee standards, image source: Metaplex

BlockBeats: In your opinion, is Pump.fun the best application built on Metaplex? Are there other "Metaplex applications" that you find interesting?

Stephen: It's an outstanding product. Personally, I haven't made much money from memes, but it is genuinely addictive, and they have done an excellent job with user experience. However, many products built on Metaplex are fantastic, so it's hard to pick just one favorite.

From an infrastructure perspective, we have mainstream wallets like Phantom, Solflare, and Backpack, as well as markets like Tensor and Magic Eden. In the gaming sector, there are excellent projects like Star Atlas. Even Nyan Heroes is a game based on Metaplex; we have collaborated with them for several years. Game development takes a long time, but the quality of this project is very high.

There are also some fantastic NFT communities, such as Mad Lads and Solana Monkey Business. Additionally, in the RWA sector, there are projects like Baxus, a company that tokenizes wine, and we believe it will be one of the pioneers in bringing real-world and commercial assets on-chain.

Projects like Radium and Orca are also using Metaplex------whether for token metadata or tokenizing LPs. Almost all Solana projects that use FTs or NFTs are built on Metaplex. With so many excellent teams and companies, it's hard to pick just one as a highlight.

BlockBeats: Unlike Ethereum's EIPs and ERCs, the Metaplex protocol and its provided standards are not part of Solana's native L1. However, the vast majority of Solana applications need to be developed based on Metaplex. From an economic interest perspective, what do you think the development relationship between Metaplex and Solana L1 looks like?

Stephen: Overall, Metaplex has become a protocol that must be involved in building applications on the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). We have found that any chain based on SVM needs the Metaplex library to run programs that are interoperable with the Solana mainnet. Therefore, we have partnered with Eclipse and Sonic to deploy MPL and look forward to expanding as the SVM ecosystem develops.

As for the economic model, you are correct; this is different from Ethereum, and I think this is also why people find it difficult to understand Metaplex. There are no directly comparable projects on Ethereum, but I believe Metaplex plays a core role in accelerating application development and driving the overall growth of the Solana ecosystem. We have direct incentives to promote the growth, adoption, and success of digital asset-related products and services, which cannot be achieved solely through community-driven standards.

This incentive mechanism allows us to provide tremendous value through a wide range of projects in the Metaplex library, such as compressed NFTs (Candy Machine), NFT combination tools (Fusion), and on-chain tax environments and hybrid DeFi solutions (MPL-404). Overall, this incentive design has allowed Metaplex to thrive while playing a key role in Solana's growth and competitiveness over the past few years.

BlockBeats: If a competitor to Metaplex emerges in the future, where do you think it will come from?

Stephen: I see the current centralized services------existing commercial, financial, and community-building infrastructures------as the real competitors. The real competition lies in whether people will invest their online social lives into on-chain communities or continue using platforms like Instagram or TikTok. Or whether they will play games like Star Atlas or traditional games like Fortnite. That is our focus.

In the long run, this is also why we chose this field. I believe the crypto industry sometimes brings disadvantages upon itself due to being too closed off. While Solana is a permissionless network where anyone can deploy their own digital asset standards, what sets Metaplex apart is our level of integration. We have the support of every wallet, every trading platform, every DeFi product, and every service in the Solana ecosystem. This breadth of distribution makes us unique and difficult to replicate.

Aura Network and the Future

Recently, the Metaplex Foundation officially launched Aura Network, a decentralized indexing and data availability network designed for Solana and SVM, providing efficient digital asset data indexing to help applications easily read blockchain states without relying on centralized infrastructure.

The three core functions of Aura Network include: data availability for digital assets, consistent indexing across programs, and resilient state management. The former provides decentralized data storage and retrieval services for applications, while the latter two provide indexing and asset conversion across Solana and SVM.

Currently, due to the expensive and slow process of Solana reading and displaying blockchain state data, dApps face significant challenges in competing with centralized counterparts. Aura addresses these issues by complementing SVM and the Metaplex library (MPL) with a decentralized network of Aura nodes.

Notably, after the launch of Aura Network, $MPLX will become the incentive token for Aura nodes and the network's gas token. This will create new consumption scenarios for $MPLX, in addition to the buyback demand from 50% of Metaplex protocol revenue. In a recent research report published by Sistine Research, MPLX was compared with existing data availability solutions, and optimistic expectations for Metaplex's future were given, suggesting that $MPLX is undervalued by 3 to 10 times.

Related Reading: 《Sistine Research: Why We Are Optimistic About Metaplex (MPLX)》

Left: MPLX token circulation and FDV comparison; Right: MPLX token buyback situation; image source: Sistine Research

BlockBeats: Many Solana developers have reported encountering many headaches when dealing with data indexing. Aura is primarily designed to address this ecological pain point, right?

Stephen: Exactly. One of the biggest challenges developers face today is how to read accurate on-chain states. SVM and Solana excel at executing state transitions------when states change, they can efficiently execute and verify interactions. But the challenge lies in how to update these state changes, replicate them, and allow developers to access them, ensuring their applications can sync with the latest states.

This delay makes it difficult for dApps to compete with centralized applications, as end users have very limited patience for waiting for applications to load or update. Even after Solana's validators have verified the state changes, applications still need to wait for the infrastructure to update before they can read that state.

The solution provided by Aura Network helps address these issues through performance, decentralized indexing, and data availability.

BlockBeats: What strategic significance do you see in Aura Network?

Stephen: From a strategic perspective, our goal is to provide a comprehensive developer platform that reduces complexity for developers. Currently, building an application requires piecing together various services and technologies. Part of the reason for this expansion is to simplify this tech stack.

With Aura, we will have SVM as the fastest engine for executing state transitions + MPL as the smart contract layer and digital asset standard, widely integrated throughout the ecosystem, along with the decentralized indexing, data availability, and content distribution services provided by Aura.

BlockBeats: What is the future direction for Metaplex?

Stephen: Aura is another significant product release for the Metaplex protocol following compressed NFTs and on-chain royalty execution. Our focus is on building a global network of Aura nodes and using $MPLX to protect and decentralize the asset database. We view this version as the first step and will continue to improve and expand it in the future.

For Metaplex, I still see it as a key infrastructure for decentralized commerce, much like Serum was in the DeFi space at the time.

We have achieved initial success in early application scenarios such as digital artists, on-chain communities, and crypto games, bringing their economic systems on-chain. However, I believe this is just an early stage of a larger transformation------in the future, all commercial activities, whether physical or digital, will operate through decentralized systems. Now that real-world assets (RWAs) are beginning to be tokenized, I see no reason for platforms like Amazon or Alibaba not to operate through peer-to-peer decentralized methods.

Metaplex is not just an NFT platform; it is also the standard for NFTs and FTs on Solana. Metaplex has been used to create over 3 million FTs and over 500 million NFTs, supporting a variety of projects ranging from DeFi applications to on-chain games. I believe both FTs and NFTs are the infrastructure needed for peer-to-peer commerce.

A similar situation can be referenced in the early development of database technology. In the early days of computing, operating systems first emerged, followed by database technology, which enabled applications to create and manage data more efficiently. A vast ecosystem of services was built on these databases, helping developers create various types of applications. Today, thousands of devices and applications rely on database technology, even though ordinary users may not realize it is the core engine driving everything.

Similarly, digital asset protocols are the foundational components of Web3 decentralized computing, just as database technology is foundational to traditional computing.