Merge pull request #172 from ethersphere/staging

Staging

content/hive/posts/depin-helps-onboard-crypto-users.md

@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
++++
+banner = "/uploads/depin1.png"
+images = [ "/uploads/depin1.png" ]
+categories = [ "Ecosystem" ]
+date = 2024-06-03T00:00:01.000Z
+description = "Web3 has been an industry that gives birth to multiple cross-industry trends. There were the ICOs and early NFTs in 2017, DeFi and play-to-earn in 2020, the second wave of NFTs"
+references_and_footnotes = [ ]
+title = "DePIN Helps Onboard the Next Million Crypto Users"
+_template = "post"
++++
+
+*NOTE: This blog was originally published at [https://telegra.ph/DePIN-New-Web3-Buzzword--Swarms-Reality-06-03](https://telegra.ph/DePIN-New-Web3-Buzzword--Swarms-Reality-06-03)*
+
+Web3 has been an industry that gives birth to multiple cross-industry trends. There were the ICOs and early NFTs in 2017, DeFi and play-to-earn in 2020, the second wave of NFTs — this time it hit even the big auction houses — in 2021-2022, memecoins coming to all new public chains with low fees every once in a while, and the rising wave of blockchain + AI starting in 2023. The next bull market cycle brings us DePIN, a new trend that is set to become viral.
+
+DePIN stands for Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Network. It could be physical or virtual infrastructure that is crowdsourced from large groups of users. Users who provide resources for such networks get token-based incentives. If you zoom out a bit, it has been in the market since long ago, because this is what decentralised blockchain projects have been doing all along, regardless of the new name [Messari and others chose for it](https://x.com).
+
+![Image 2](/uploads/depin2.png)
+*Source: trends.google.com*  
+
+Indeed, Swarm’s network of 15,000 storage nodes fits the definition of DePIN (Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Network) perfectly. The project code is open-sourced and audited. There is no central authority that can stop or drop nodes in the network. Peers are individual users who provide their storage resources, or physical infrastructure. Another important aspect of being a DePIN project is that the network offers the infrastructure providers some incentives. Since blockchain can be a good way to organise a network with transparent participation rules and can implement cryptocurrency-based reward mechanics, there are [more than 100 DePIN projects](https://coinmarketcap.com) in the blockchain industry.
+
+### Why DePINs Matter?
+
+So why will the DePIN trend become viral? This is a new way people can make money. Unlike other investments when people take out some money, put it somewhere, and wait for the asset/project to add value for them to be able to sell, DePIN is a simpler way: you already have the resources you can earn with, so you can earn money right away. There are a lot of people that have idle resources, physical and digital. They offer the resources, get rewards for it, spread the word, and increase the usage of DePIN. Crowdsourcing and decentralisation make wonders. The DePIN L1 network called [peaq](https://www.peaq.network/) has a nice supporting visual:
+
+![Image 3](/uploads/depin3.png)
+*Source: [peaq.network](https://www.peaq.network/)*  
+
+Generally speaking, the more people join DePINs, the better they get. They develop faster because there is no central governing body. To make an analogy, DePINs are better than traditional infrastructure the same way Uber is better than a local taxi service and AirBNB is better than a local hotel.
+
+Like DePINs, blockchain is also about cutting out the middlemen and their costs that take away the value that belongs to you or add up to what you pay. In a decentralised P2P network, all the participants are equal and face fair competition. Meanwhile, DePINs are an easy way for you to provide value for a network without much effort. They don’t require KYC, either. By combining DePINs with blockchain open ledgers where the rules are hard-coded into the protocol and all participants decide on how it should move forward via reaching a consensus, and not by unilaterally changing the terms of service like the big tech does, the true power of blockchain economy shines.
+
+### Onboarding the Next Million Users, Without Crypto 
+
+What usually bugs the would-be blockchain users is the entry threshold. In this industry, the most popular way to enter and start contributing to a project is via centralised gatekeepers, i.e. exchange platforms. You convert fiat money to popular cryptocurrencies, then swap the popular ones for the one you need, and only after meeting the project’s requirements can qualify for a network contributor. The less popular way is mining and then swapping the assets. Here you can skip centralised agents but normally need to have specific high-range hardware. One can no longer mine Bitcoin on just any computer as it was 10+ years ago.
+
+![Image 4](/uploads/depin4.png)
+*Source: The Book of Swarm*  
+
+DePINs solve this problem with barter relations: first you provide some valuable service or resource, then the network rewards you for it. For instance, Swarm has “Start Without A Penny” bootstrapping where your computer (even a Raspberry Pi) will be enough to join the network and qualify for incentives. In 2024, node incentives on Swarm averaged $2-7. Isn’t that nice for something you have, but don’t use to the fullest, and thus decide to share with peers on a decentralised network? Please bear in mind that hardware requirements on Swarm are very low.  
+
+
+![Image 5](/uploads/depin5.png) 
+
+*Average monthly earnings for an active staking node (a node which has submitted a commit transaction at least once in the month) on Swarm, 2024. Source: blog.ethswarm.org*  
+
+Now that IoT devices have come to many households, your smart TV, fridge or router can do this, too, let alone your smartphone. Just look at what [IoTeX](https://iotex.io/) and [peaq network](https://www.peaq.network/) do to have an understanding how easy and massive this thing is getting.
+
+![Image 6](/uploads/depin6.png)
+*Source: Crypto Computer-Man on YouTube*  
+
+When blockchain proponents start their crypto adoption pitch, they should be telling everyone about DePINs and how easy they are for newcomers, not about some abstract ETFs or fiat gateways that charge you 2-5% on your bank card for buying BTC or ETH. This is one of the ways to onboard the next 200 million users to crypto.
+
+[Original Article](https://telegra.ph/DePIN-New-Web3-Buzzword--Swarms-Reality-06-03)

content/hive/posts/the-origins-of-swarm.md

@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
++++
+banner = "/uploads/og1.png"
+images = [ "/uploads/og1.png" ]
+categories = [ "Ecosystem" ]
+date = 2024-05-08T00:00:01.000Z
+description = "It struck us that it has been 10 years since the idea of Swarm was formulated. Can you believe it is one decade old? That’s a real shocker! Let’s go 10 years back and see how it all started."
+references_and_footnotes = [ ]
+title = "The Origins of Swarm"
+_template = "post"
++++
+
+*NOTE: This blog was originally published at [https://telegra.ph/The-Origins-of-Swarm-05-08](https://telegra.ph/The-Origins-of-Swarm-05-08)*
+
+It struck us that it has been 10 years since the idea of Swarm was formulated. Can you believe it is one decade old? That’s a real shocker! Let’s go 10 years back and see how it all started.
+
+## Inception
+
+The grand idea behind Swarm is a decentralized storage and messaging system built on blockchain. It originated within the cradle of Ethereum and serves as a permissionless private storage infrastructure for dApp code, user data, blockchain data, state data, and any data you wish to store privately, securely, and for an indefinite time.
+
+In the spring of 2014, Ethereum co-founders Gavin Wood and Vitalik Buterin came up with the idea of having separate protocols for computation, communication, and data storage within the Ethereum ecosystem. The idea of Swarm belongs to the Ethereum co-founder and later founder of Polkadot, Kusama, Parity, and Web3 Foundation Gavin Wood. The three protocols later got their famous nickname “the holy trinity of Ethereum”:
+
+![Image 2](/uploads/og2.png)
+*Gavin Wood’s version of the holy trinity of Ethereum. Wait!... If Gavin Wood also coined the term “web3,” these two notions look suspiciously related. Either way, the above trinity became a duo after Whisper shut down in 2021 and Swarm took over its communication functionality. Source: vitalik.eth.limo*
+
+According to Vitalik Buterin, unlike himself who initially saw Ethereum as “Bitcoin plus smart contracts,” Gavin Wood thought about it more broadly as one of a set of technologies that could together form the base layer of a more open internet stack. It was Vitalik Buterin who came up with the protocol tags eth for Ethereum, shh for Whisper, and bzz for Swarm. Together with Jeffrey Wilcke, Wood and Buterin opened the floodgate of bee jokes and geek humor that continues to date.
+
+## First Public Appearance
+
+![Ethereum London meetup, May 2014](/uploads/og3.png)
+*Ethereum London meetup, May 2014*
+
+On 9 May, 2014, at the [Ethereum London meetup](https://www.meetup.com), Gavin Wood who was Ethereum CTO at the time presented the speech “The Ethereum Experience”. There he provided the latest development updates, early UI mockups, and the extensive overview of Ethereum and how it could fit in a zero-trust, decentralized Web 3.0 model as part of an ecosystem of decentralized content distribution, messaging, and networking. This was the first public appearance of Swarm!
+
+![Features of Swarm](/uploads/og4.jpeg)
+*Features of Swarm*
+
+According to Dr. Wood, Swarm was thought to be a place for publication where creators can share their content and others can reshare it for free. “To some degree, there are already technologies that provide these: not so much for the Ethereum thing, for Whisper there’s things already like Bitmessage, for Swarm there’s BitTorrent. But we really want to do something better. We want to push the boat, make it proper.”
+
+![Advantages of Swarm compared to other solutions](/uploads/og5.jpeg)
+*Advantages of Swarm compared to other solutions*
+
+Unlike BitTorrent, Swarm would provide encryption, so that the nodes that host information were protected from censorship, would be more flexible, and provide incentives. In its semi-permanent storage, users could store their data for as long as they wish to. Next up, Ethereum and Swarm started to take shape.
+
+![ÐΞVcon-0. Source: archive.devcon.org](/uploads/og6.jpeg)
+*ÐΞVcon-0. Source: archive.devcon.org*
+
+[Devcon 0](https://archive.devcon.org) (ÐΞVcon-0) that happened in Berlin in late November 2014 was the first developer conference for Ethereum and Swarm. Long prior to the launch of Ethereum, the earliest builders and co-founders gathered in the Kreuzberg neighborhood to outline their work and designs for the future of Ethereum. It is a great resource to learn about the historical context and the early ethos of the project.
+
+![Devcon 0: Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood are hugging](/uploads/og7.png)
+*Devcon 0: Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood are hugging (in the centre, below). Viktor Trón (first from left, below) and Dániel Nagy (fourth from left, up) among the initial Ethereum team. Source: medium.com/ethereum-swarm*
+
+Since late 2014, Dániel Nagy has started working on Swarm. You can watch Dániel’s presentation [Keeping the Public Record Safe and Accessible](https://archive.devcon.org) at Devcon 0 where he put forward the initial technical considerations for the project. The Swarm team focused on the following:
+
+- a solution characterized by integrity (keeping the information immutable), permanence (impossibility to delete), resilience, speed, and optimal utilization of available resources (network, storage, and power)
+- low latency rather than high throughput
+- small pieces of data: the vast majority of data (e.g., parts of a state, transactions, and contracts) fits one 4 KB chunk
+- Kademlia rather than ad-hoc network topology to achieve centrality for each network node
+- nodes in a neighborhood redundantly store what’s close to them; the farther the data, the sooner it will be erased.
+
+![Swarm](/uploads/og8.png)
+*Source: ethswarm.org*
+
+The above surely qualifies as basic prerequisites to build a decentralized service to host unstoppable data! With those in mind, the Ethereum masterminds went on to implement the native blockchain-based storage infrastructure.
+
+## First Realization
+
+In 2015, Viktor Trón and Dániel Nagy [took over Swarm development](https://medium.com) within the Ethereum Foundation’s Geth team. They began to realize the resilient serverless infrastructure with censorship resistance and zero downtime to match the “decentralized CPU” Ethereum came to be so as to create the cypherpunk decentralized internet Gavin Wood called “web3”.
+
+![Satoshi Nakamoto quote](/uploads/og9.png)
+
+Ethereum held an ICO in summer of 2014 and launched its first version Frontier in July 2015. It wasn’t until [geth 1.5](https://blog.ethereum.org) in late 2016 when the first public pilot of Swarm made it to the official go-ethereum release as an experimental feature and its testnet connected to the Ropsten testnet. This release brought about the following:
+
+- bandwidth accounting using the Swarm Accounting Protocol (SWAP): anyone can use Swarm for free, as long as they provide services to their peers or wish to wait until they gather enough credit
+- immutable hash-based addressing: once a document is published under a fixed address, there is no way you can overwrite or change its content
+- domain name resolution on blockchain and storage of all data off the Ethereum chain
+- data chunk syncing to multiple nodes: anything uploaded to Swarm cannot be unseen, unpublished, revoked or removed.
+
+![Swarm ICO](/uploads/og10.png)
+
+This pilot started a long way towards Swarm’s independence from the Ethereum Foundation and later a full-featured release on its own mainnet in 2021. Thanks to blockchain-based incentives, the serverless infrastructure of Swarm solved the pain points of previous serverless solutions that had to rely on the altruistic contribution of participants and were vulnerable due to the possibility of free riding.
+
+![Swarm tweet](/uploads/og11.png)
+
+Swarm allows for upload and disappear, which means that any node can just upload content to Swarm and then go offline. As long as nodes do not drop out or become unavailable, the content will still be accessible due to redundant synchronization between nodes.
+
+## Outro
+
+This is how the great journey of Swarm started. By the way, this journey recently got [even more exciting](https://bitcoinworld.co.in): Swarm finalized its 2.0 roadmap, shut down the bonding curve mechanism after a community governance vote, and introduced erasure coding and a self-sufficient price oracle. This move opens a new chapter for the project’s growth.
+
+![Swarm community X account](/uploads/og12.png)
+
+If you wish to share this journey with Swarm, follow the community-run [announcement channel](https://t.me) to get notifications about new articles and all the Swarm updates. Also follow [Beelon Musk](https://twitter.com) on X to get a taste of that bee humor. See you soon!