At the latest Filecoin Developer Summit (FDS), Nicola Greco (of FilOz) introduced a vision to evolve Filecoin’s decentralized cloud services: Filecoin Web Services (FWS). FWS aims to provide a framework for deploying composable cloud services – allowing new protocols to bootstrap into a shared marketplace of offerings, all composable with each other.
Expanding Beyond Proof of Replication: Expanding the functionality of Filecoin
To understand FWS, it’s useful to first recap how the existing service offerings exist inside the Filecoin network.
The core storage offering, Proof of Replication (PoRep), allows storage providers to use proofs over uniquely encoded data to show that they are still in possession of specific pieces of data. Filecoin uses PoRep both for storage and for consensus – this requires higher security parameters, and therefore makes Filecoin’s base storage offering akin to cold storage. This makes Filecoin’s base offering ideal for datasets that might have a need for strong guarantees around uniqueness and existence but can accept slower access times.
Furthermore, because Filecoin launched prior to the FVM, much of the onchain tooling (e.g. to set up and maintain storage deals, to enable payments) exist as “system actors” or non-programmable functions on the network. This means many of those functions were built to support the original storage functions on the network – but for any evolution would require a full network upgrade in order to modify or support new functionality.
However, as more storage on-ramp’s pushed into building storage solutions for customers, it became clear that there was a need for more storage offerings over and above the base offering from Filecoin. As a result, new types of proofs (such as proof of data possession) have been proposed to run on the Filecoin network – allowing for more use cases to be natively supported.
In designing these new offerings to sit on top of Filecoin, it became clear that many of these new proof offerings would need generalized versions of the onchain tooling that exists as “system actors” – such as payment rails. Rather than having many systems independently evolve their own architecture (and risk losing composability), a new proposal was put forward to focus on building modular, composable systems via FWS.
Introducing Filecoin Web Services: A Modular Approach to Cloud Services
At the core of Greco’s vision is the concepts of modularity and reuse. If each new service were to build their entire protocol from scratch, they’d need to develop work ranging from deal management to escrow and SLA enforcement – which would lead to a high barrier to entry for new services. FWS proposes a unified protocol that standardizes these components, allowing developers to focus on building specific services rather than recreating the entire stack.
FWS would serve as a thin, opinionated layer that manages payments, collateral, deal structuring, and SLA enforcement across various services. This standardization would enable seamless integration of new services, whether they are storage-related like PDP and retrieval services or entirely new offerings like markets for zk-SNARK proofs or AI-based computations. By providing a common framework, FWS would reduce complexity, lower development costs, and increase the rate of development for building within the Filecoin ecosystem.
The Power of a Unified Marketplace: Enhancing Efficiency and Accessibility
One of the key benefits of FWS is its potential to streamline the user experience. Without FWS, users would need to lock tokens in multiple smart contracts to access different services, leading to inefficiencies in collateral management and prepayment and increase users’ cost. FWS envisions a single entry point where users can determine how they’d like to pay – prepaid or pay-as-you-go – with the same rails being usable by multiple services. This model mirrors the convenience of traditional cloud services, where users simply provide a payment method and are periodically billed.
Moreover, by consolidating financial management into a single contract, FWS would improve collateral efficiency and reduce the overhead associated with managing multiple service contracts. This would also allow utilization of one service to enable credit in other services – allowing a credit history to be built up across disparate protocols. This approach not only simplifies the user experience but also enhances the overall liquidity and flexibility of the Filecoin ecosystem.
A Vision for the Future: FWS as a Distribution Layer for Decentralized Services
Looking ahead, Greco envisions FWS not just as a tool for enhancing Filecoin’s storage capabilities but as a broader distribution layer for decentralized services. As the ecosystem grows, FWS could facilitate the integration of multiple networks and protocols, creating a cohesive marketplace for storage, compute, bandwidth, and other services. This would position Filecoin at the center of a vibrant, interconnected ecosystem, driving innovation and adoption across the decentralized web. By offering a marketplace for diverse services such as zero-knowledge proof generation, decentralized compute, FWS could position Filecoin as a leading platform in the decentralized web, supporting a wide array of applications beyond storage.
To understand more about FWS, watch the full keynote by Nicola Greco on Youtube
Many thanks to Jonathan Victor for reviewing and providing valuable insights to this piece.
Disclaimer: This information is for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute investment, financial, legal, or other advice. This information is not an endorsement, offer, or recommendation to use any particular service, product, or application.
