Aleph.im is bringing decentralized cloud services to developers and teams building on Avalanche. Upon completion of the integration (expected Feb 4, 2021), developers can replace centralized services for their applications’ database and computing and embrace full decentralization.
Aleph.im’s core mission is to help decentralized apps and protocols strip off the centralized parts of their stack. Centralized cloud services are the backbone of the internet, with the top three providers sharing 60% of the market. Such high centralization has a cost: systemic risks for the web when these services suffer outages, which happens regularly.
That’s where Aleph.im comes in. Its technology decentralizes cloud services and the web, starting with DeFi and Web3. Aleph.im allows anyone to join its network and participate by providing storage space and computing power. The project is often thought of as a decentralized Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Firebase and a replacement for those functions.
“I am excited to now support Avalanche and all the projects built on its revolutionary blockchain infrastructure, bringing our unstoppable cloud services to all the teams building the new generation of fully decentralized web3 products” — Aleph.im CEO, Jonathan Schemoul
Use cases are endless and range from DeFi products, fully decentralized NFTs, unstoppable social networks, real-time DApps, messaging DApps, censorship-resistant web apps, and even tamper-proof document certification systems.
Both Avalanche and Aleph.im allow the creation of private networks — private channels for Aleph.im and private subnets on Avalanche — which will empower enterprises to easily build permissioned, compliant projects with a consortium model.
Aleph.im was built using a unique blend of blockchain and peer to peer technologies.
The network uses libp2p and decentralized pubsub (called gossipsub) to distribute the messages and guarantee speed. The hashes of the messages are committed regularly on-chain to ensure maximum, immutable security.
The network is already used by live projects including a Dropbox-like app, a blogging app, and more. In all use-cases, data is encrypted by default, always owned and controlled by the user. Additionally, GDPR compliance is met thanks to a forget function that will be introduced later this year.
