Hi guys! Welcome to yet another ICO review. We are going to analyze the Bluzelle ICO, which was successfully concluded last month. We will start with a brief overview of the ICO and then proceed to its idea, MVP, partnerships and verdict.
Bluzelle ICO Overview.
Bluzelle is a decentralized, low-cost, on-demand, scalable database designed for dapps. Using Bluzelle, producers will be able to offer their extra storage areas for consumers to put their data. Consumers pay producers with BLZ tokens to access the database.
Bluzelle ensures the speed and privacy of the network using shading techniques. This involves taking the consumer data and breaking it into shards, encrypting the shards uniquely, replicating them, and then storing the duplicated shards in a swarm. This creates a condition whereby each swarm only stores portions of all the data.
Each of the swarms has billions of nodes, any of which are waiting to serve a database request. Bluzelle then uses AI intelligence to choose which node will serve the request depending on factors such as the distance between the nodes and the client making the request. This ensures redundancy by retrieving data from the fastest and nearest nodes-similar to what happens when using torrents.
Bluzelle will be partnering with traditional cloud servers such as Rackspace, Azure and AWS to provide storage. Afterwards they will allow the public to earn BLZ tokens by renting out their empty hard drive space.
Market.
The continued use of technologies such as Blockchain, AI and IOT is straining our current storage systems. The Ethereum technology for example needs a system to store user identity data. However, it is not designed for data storage, and using it to do so would consume a lot of space and time. The only solution available at the moment is using centralized databases which are costly, non-scalable, and vulnerable to hacking.
Decentralized storage solutions counter these problems in several ways;
- They use nodes that are distributed across the globe. In case any of these nodes gets hacked, they are not affected because they have many other nodes spread out across the globe, which can take their part.
- The decentralized nature of these nodes also makes the system highly scalable because Bluzelle will have its own marketplace where vendors can quickly provision their nodes.
- Bluzelle also allows customers to specify how fast they want to access their data, but at an additional cost depending on the level.
- To ensure the privacy of user files, Bluzelle splits them up into various portions, and disperses them across various nodes.
Here are similar products in the market:
Enigma.
Enigma is a second layer network that will help blockchains to scale by providing a complementary off-chain data network, where larger quantities of information can be securely shared and processed without incurring severe on-chain costs. As the decentralized web continues to scale, this protocol will provide a necessary second-layer network that can handle more data, faster, and with better privacy features.
The first application to be built on the data marketplace is Catalyst, a platform for data-driven crypto asset investing and research. Powered by the Enigma financial data marketplace, Catalyst empowers users to share and curate data and build profitable, data-driven investment strategies. You can also immediately execute your strategies on major exchanges using Catalyst’s live trading tools.
ENG (Enigma tokens) is the protocol token that is linked to sharing and exchanging data. In the early days, ENG would also be used to incentivize adoption, but longer-term the token would extend beyond the Catalyst application and would be used in all applications serving data in the decentralized data marketplace.
Their next implementation is an off-chain network, running on a federated network of known nodes. This will be the MVP of the Enigma protocol. Later, they will launch an open off-chain network where everyone can become a node and provide storage and computational resources in return for ENG tokens.
Enigma have partnerships with various companies including ETHLend, Kyber, Etherdelta, Anion and Invest feed.
This provides secure and private cloud storage. They also utilize file fragmentation and encryption to protect user data. However, they don’t create a free market space for lending because the company fixes the price of your extra space.
Costs are $0.015per GB per month and $0.05per GB downloaded
Renters pay farmers in SJCX to store their data network. Farmers will use SJCX to cover the costs of their set ups. SJCX will also be used in various ways to organize the network and prevent spam.
Their mining software is called Storj Share and it’s already running. The application allows users to rent their excess hardware, essentially acting as nodes for the network.
IPFS/File coin.
This is a P2P protocol designed to create a permanent and decentralized method of storing files. They also have a marketplace and reputation system.
File coin tokens are used by users to pay storage providers.
The IPFS community have made great strides so far, and there are many apps being built on the protocol such as Open Bazaar and Brave Browser. Farming hasn’t started yet, although registrations are now open in their website.
Sia is an open-source software company that provides decentralized storage by splitting and distributing files to a network of nodes.
They a market place and reputation system; the cost to store 1 Terabyte on Sia is only $2. Compare this to the $10 per month that Google, Dropbox, and Apple charge; unlike Dropbox, Sia is metered, which means you only pay for what you use; the total Siacoin supply will increase by about 85.5% over the next 5 years; they have a proof of burn mechanism
Sia coins are required to pay for storage space within the network. The host has to store the files for an agreed upon space and time, and has to put up Suasion as collateral.
The company was founded many years ago and they have had a beta running since May 2015. In 2018 Q1, they will be introducing file sharing between users. This will extend the usability of the token while increasing network effects.
Sia have several partnerships under their belt including Luxor, Minebox, PixelDrain, Obelisk, SiaBerry, SiaDrive, SiaHub and SiaStats.
Maidsafe.
Maidsafe decentralizes all the current internet services, by removing servers and other points of weakness.
They don’t use the blockchain directly for decentralization and have a different consensus system. Farmers take care of the network for providing their computing power, disk space or uptime. Third party app developers are paid by the network depending on how much their apps are popular. And clients use the network to browse, upload data, use daps etc.
How is it different from other projects in the space?
Bluzelle and Enigma are database services while the others are file services. They allow third-parties to subscribe and query to a given dataset.
Looking at the data storage projects, we chose Bluzelle as a potential winner because of their many partnerships compared to Enigma. As for file storage we chose Sia because they are far more advanced in their roadmap.
Partnerships.
Bluzelle is building on top of the Ox protocol to offer relayers a standard database service. They are also working with Ziliqa to provide an integrated solution so that users can build daps with Bluzelle as the underlying data storage layer. They also working together with Beetoken.
Bluzelle ICO MVP.
The first major usable version of Bluzelle will be called Lovelace. It was planned for release last year but hasn’t been released yet. It will operate purely as testnet with all the nodes being provided by Bluzelle using it’s partnerships with Microsoft and British Telecom.
Conclusion.
We think it’s not worth investing in Bluzelle especially because they have already ICO’d. However, you could wait for their farming program and earn BLZs by renting out your extra space.
Bluzelle ICO Ratings.
Team: 7
Advisors: 8
Idea: 7
Hype/Community: 8
Prototype/MVP: 4
Overall: 6.8
