Shaping the Future of Decentralized Infrastructure: Interview with Founders of Stratos

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Decentralization. Once a term vaguely familiar to the public, today it became deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness, primarily in relation to the world of cryptocurrency. But decentralization is not limited to a specific object – rather, it is a distinctive approach, or a vision, of what should be embraced as the norm within a society. Decentralization rests on the fundamental assumption that everyone must have equal access and control over data, the prized asset which the 21st century values more than gold. Neoliberalstic in its core, this idea has paved the way for a thriving ecosystem of services built on distributed ledger and blockchain networks, gradually paving the way for the internet into its third paradigm – Web3.

Every ecosystem has two essential components in its heart: biotic and abiotic. The biotic component encompasses the organisms that form the backbone of the system, while the abiotic component comprises various systems that sustain the overall ‘health’ of the structure. Consider the Earth: while the planet continues to captivate with its endless complexity, it owes its existence as a small flourishing island in the vast emptiness of space to the protective stratosphere. Same as with our planet, the equilibrium in the decentralised ecosystem must be maintained to guarantee its subsistence.

Some of the big projects already recognised that. Such, Ethereum and Bitcoin have successfully grown by cultivating a rich ecosystem of supporting services rather than just being payment tokens. However, there is a project on the horizon that seeks to challenge its predecessors in both scale and ambition – Stratos. Positioned as an independent Decentralized Cloud, Stratos aims to establish the most legitimate decentralized infrastructur,, offering scalable, reliable, and self-balanced storage, database, as well as computation networks on top of blockchain. With a vision to spearhead the Decentralized Era, Stratos committed to provide the accessible gateway to decentralization to all, thus empowering blockchain projects to pave the way for a future where data sovereignty and equal access are the new norm.

Today, I have a privilege of speaking with the founder of Stratos – Bin Zhu, who will enlighten me on their profound vision of the Era of Decentralization, as well as the pivotal role of Stratos in propelling this expanding movement forward.

1. How does decentralization transform the way we approach data management in the 21st century?

Decentralization revolutionizes data management by fostering trust, dataonwership, and equal rights, accessibility, shifting control from a central authority to a distributed network. In the 21st century, it empowers individuals, enhances privacy and ownership, and ensures resilience against single points of failure. 

2. Please introduce the blockchain-savvy founders behind Stratos. Can you tell us more about their expertise in the field?

As the founder of Stratos, I have over 20 years of experience in software development across multiple platforms and technologies. Previously,  I was the  Cloud Department Founder of MindGeek. A tech entrepreneur at heart,  I co-founded Faimdata, a company providing AI solutions to identify the true single customer view.

The Stratos team comprises exceptional developers with extensive experience drawn from prominent organizations such as Canadian National Railways, Amazon, Expedia, and Alibaba. Each team member brings a wealth of expertise in enterprise-level development. Remarkably, one-third of our team hails from Mindgeek, a top-ranking Internet company renowned for its massive user traffic. As the founder of Mindgeek’s Cloud team, Bin led the design and development of a data platform capable of handling millions of transactions per second and processing hundreds of billions of records daily. This platform serves over 100 million users globally each day. This invaluable experience in architecting a global data network has been integral to Stratos since its inception, instilling it with the DNA required for large-scale commercial applications from day one.

3. In the realm of decentralization, can you shed light on the intriguing concept of Web3? What is its intricate connection with the world of decentralization?

Simple explanation:

In Web2, if you are a Facebook user, all your posts and friends’ info are stored and managed by the Facebook team in their data centre.

In Web3, all your posts and friends’ info are stored in your node; you own all your data, and none of the others could modify or ban it. 

So Web3 is the ownership revolution of Web2; different decentralized technologies handle data security, data ownership, data validation and verification. The validation/verification can be managed by blockchain technology, and data security, and Stratos’s decentralized storage network could implement data ownership.

4. What specific use cases does Stratos envision for its Decentralized Data Mesh? How does it aim to address the needs of different industries or applications?

Stratos envisions its decentralized cloud serving a wide range of use cases across industries for enterprise-level of data infrastructure. We aims to provide a all-in-one solid foundation for business and applications from both Web2 and Web3. 

Empowered use-cases ranging from safeguarding valuable NFTs and game assets to optimizing enterprise data management, accelerating content delivery through CDN, enhancing video streaming quality, and empowering Web3 developers to create resilient decentralized applications. Stratos decentralized storage’s flexibility and performance make it a versatile choice for industries spanning gaming, finance, enterprise, multimedia, and beyond, ensuring secure data storage, reliable content distribution, and robust decentralized applications in the rapidly evolving landscape of Web3 and blockchain technology. 

To empower more builders and developers to build and grow the Stratos ecosystem, Stratos is launching the 1 Million developer grant program.  

5. In a competitive landscape with projects like Filecoin and Arweave, what sets Stratos apart and makes it unique in terms of its approach to decentralized storage?

a. Proof-of-Traffic Consensus: In the digital realm, traffic stands as a paramount metric for assessing the value of an Internet product. Stratos designs the unique PoTconsensus to precisely gauge the resource utilization (including storage, computing, and database usage) by individual participants within our network and incentivize an active & healthy network. 

b. Hot data Driven: Stratos employs innovative 3-layer architecture to achieve high-performance and speed for enterprise-level hot data needs, crucial for handling the growing demands for content streaming of decentralized applications such as SocialFi, Gaming, and beyond. 

c. Decentralized Cloud Solution: Stratos introduces the concept of a Decentralized Data Mesh, enhancing all-in-one decentralized infrastructure with storage, computation, database and blockchain. This approach enables Web3 projects and builders to get rid of  centralized web services and develop more versatile Dapps at ease. 

6. Within Stratos, what is your team’s vision for the future of Web3 infrastructure and decentralized storage?​​​​​

Stratos envisions to provide a trustless decentralized infrastructure service solution that allows blockchain & Web3 developers to get rid of monopolized centralized cloud services, for the first time. ​​

​​​​Stratos will become the most solid cornerstone of the Era of Decentralization, supporting the decentralized service infrastructure, and contributing to the blockchain industry. 

7. Could you provide us with a glimpse into how Stratos with its team actively drives towards the realization of its decentralized vision?

First, we built a solid decentralized storage infra, which has already been delivered. 

After that, we will collaborate with third-party entities to enhance the end-user experience. In the meantime, our team will also focus on developing some Dapps that cater to the everyday usage requirements of end-users, such as decentralized Dropbox and secure email services.

8. How does Stratos empower Dapps (decentralized applications) and builders in the blockchain space? Are there any specific tools or features that developers can leverage?

Stratos provides developer-friendly PRC/SDK tools for the Web3 builder community to develop Dapps easily.  The team also built some specific tools for users/developers, such as, IPFS migration for user to migrate data from IPFS to Stratos Storage network. 

Developers can get started here: https://docs.thestratos.org/docs-resource-node/sds-ipfs-handbook/

9. Can you share any notable partnerships or collaborations that Stratos has established to enhance its ecosystem and further enable its use cases?

As the Stratos mainnet has recently been launched, the team’s foremost priority is to ensure that it remains stable and highly available during the warm-up period. We plan to explore more partnerships and collaborations once the Stratos network has become stronger and more scalable.

10. Lastly, can you elaborate on any upcoming developments that will further solidify the position of Stratos as a leading provider of decentralized Web3 infrastructure and storage solutions?

After 2 years of development and 5 versions of testnet upgrades, we have successfully launched the highly-anticipated Stratos decentralized storage mainnet. This milestone marks Stratos as a reliable source of infrastructure power for any Web3 projects, Dapps, and traditional businesses with our lightning-fast, fully decentralized, and commercial-level storage solutions.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.