Meson Network: Aggregate idle bandwidth resources and expand the boundaries of decentralization
Original author: DavidZZ
Recently, the market has begun to show signs of recovery.
In early October, Arthur Hayes wrote on his blog that money is pouring into the AI field. Considering that AI requires a lot of computing and storage resources, he is strongly optimistic about Filecoin in the decentralized storage sector at the intersection of cryptocurrencies. Arthurs judgment is not unreasonable, and the trend is indeed obvious.
But a trend has two sides: the front represents narrative, while the other side struggles with reality.
Compared with the blog posts of big guys promoting decentralized storage, the corresponding picture files of an ordinary users NFT are stored on IPFS or Filecoin; when the NFT craze comes, his small pictures are likely to be blocked by the server during the peak period. Intensive access can lead to slow loading or even crashes.
There is always a gap between ideals and reality. It is easier to find good projects by looking for opportunities in gaps. The speculation opportunities of $FIL are well known, but if someone can solve the experience problem of larger-scale data access in IPFS or even the Web3 world, will it have more long-term value?
If that small picture stored on Filecoin happens to be cached by someone very close to you, will the experience be much better when you use his bandwidth to download and access it? In fact, not only decentralized storage, but also a large number of Web3 infrastructure and applications have an unknown but crucial guardian - Meson Network.
Most readers may be unfamiliar with this name, but its products and services are very easy to understand:
Aggregate a large amount of idle bandwidth resources around the world and allocate them to all enterprises or projects that have needs for data transmission, access and acquisition, so that they can have a better user experience.
Multiple infrastructure projects and applications such as BNB Greenfield, BSC, OpBNB, IPFS, Arweave and Mask have cooperated with it to improve the performance of data access and data synchronization in their respective businesses.
It is worth mentioning that Meson Network has not been in the spotlight of hot narratives, but in the past three years, it has attracted more than 100,000 nodes in 150 countries around the world to provide bandwidth services, and it has also found maturity. Stable profit model.
Most Web3 projects, without marketing and tokens, will find it difficult to continue to accumulate such a large number of users and scale after a bull-bear cycle.
Whats so special about Meson Network that it can achieve such results when the industry generally hopes for Mass Adoption?
Because its business is more low-level, it is difficult for ordinary users to fully understand the whole picture of the project. At the same time, there is a lack of in-depth analysis of Meson Network in the current market.
In this issue, we will start from the demand for bandwidth in the entire Web3 world, dig into the problems Meson Network needs to solve, current product business and future plans, etc., and explore the value and more possibilities of the project.
New era, old problems
When it comes to Meson Networks bandwidth service, most peoples inherent impression still remains on the acceleration effect of bandwidth and CDN on watching videos. The reality is much more than that.
Nowadays, in different areas of Web3, the collective thirst for bandwidth is more obvious, but it is difficult to detect it from the perspective of ordinary users.
In contrast, what we are more aware of is that the entire encryption industry has entered a new era:
It is no longer the barbaric state of only Bitcoin and Ethereum 5-10 years ago. There are new developments in multiple subdivisions; such as the separation of L1 and L2 functions, the symbiosis of NFT and decentralized storage, and even AI and The combination of cryptocurrencies...
In the new era, old problems are more likely to be exposed.
The more subdivided the field is and the more the ecology develops, the more decentralized projects have to face data access efficiency and experience issues.
For L1, the emergence of more public chains also means that nodes in different regions around the world need to synchronize the status of the entire ledger more quickly. It is still difficult to take snapshots of the synchronization status between a large number of nodes;
The emergence of more L2 also means that more transactions need to be summarized, packaged and passed to L1. How to verify this data faster and cache this data more safely for emergencies has also become a problem;
Going back to the decentralized storage mentioned at the beginning, users in different regions also need to get a consistent experience when reading NFT image data, at least without lags and crashes;
As for AI, when multi-party computation and model training inspired by blockchain become a reality, users in different regions will need faster data download and synchronization speeds...
All of this requires basic bandwidth resources to support it.
The benefits of decentralization are often talked about, but the limitations are easily overlooked:
When you say that Web3 is decentralized, it also means from the root: due to physical distance issues, users and projects in different regions of the world will inevitably find it difficult to obtain consistency when accessing data, transmitting data, and obtaining data in the above cases. experience;
Southeast Asian users will inevitably experience lag when accessing small pictures stored in Europe, and the synchronization of ledger data among L1 nodes scattered around the world will inevitably be slow...
Therefore, Web3 projects naturally have a common appeal - they need appropriate and sufficient bandwidth resources to ensure decentralized data access and use.
Essentially, all the security and usability of a cryptocurrency is derived from hardware resources determined by basic economic principles.
If you still find it difficult to understand, we might as well make an inappropriate but more popular metaphor:
There are various short videos (Dapp) and various content platforms (L1/L2) on the market now. However, the base stations near your home have not been built or there are very few (bandwidth support), which will inevitably cause lags and lags during downloading and viewing. It is not available, and the so-called 4G/5G era is out of the question.
Therefore, the entire industry actually needs a bandwidth resource provider to reasonably allocate bandwidth resources according to different projects and the geographical locations of different users, so as to continuously ensure the data transmission and access experience;
This is exactly what Meson Network is exploring.
Meson Network: From working quietly to unsheathing the sword
First of all, to provide bandwidth for the entire Web3 world, where can we get so many resources?
The answer given by Meson Network is: leveraging and integrating. That is, through the long-tail market and the sharing economy model, the idle bandwidth of other people in different regions around the world is gathered and allocated to those with data transmission needs according to certain rules, forming a decentralized bandwidth resource network;
The concept of the sharing economy is simple, but when the Meson Network is actually implemented, how can it ensure that nodes with different attributes, different devices, and different statuses around the world can access the network and contribute their own bandwidth?
Coming to the product level, currently any residential bandwidth and commercial bandwidth (IDC, data center) worldwide can be added to the network to become a node that contributes bandwidth; even personal mobile phones, computers and other small devices can also be added, as much as possible. significantly lowers the access threshold;
In addition, Meson Network also silently adapts to the operating systems and models of different devices, making accessing the network, running programs and contributing bandwidth a relatively standardized and simple process.
Finally, if we delve into why these nodes are willing to contribute bandwidth, we return to the classic topics in the blockchain field: incentives and distribution.
On the premise of ensuring that your own bandwidth is idle, you can get corresponding benefits by contributing bandwidth to others. The specific revenue method involves the economic model and business model of the project, which we will introduce in detail later.
But is this current sharing economy model feasible? The current actual operating data may have illustrated the problem.
The data dashboard on the official website of Meson Network shows that after three years of silent hard work, it has now expanded 10 W+ nodes contributing idle bandwidth globally, and the nodes are distributed across five continents, which can effectively support the bandwidth of data access in different regions. need.
The online duration and time period of different nodes may be different, but the network scale formed by the huge total number of nodes allows Meson Network to have more flexibility in scheduling when faced with bandwidth requirements in different regions.
At the same time, we have also seen an atypical path for the development of Web3 infrastructure projects in such a network scale:
In a less conspicuous track, there is no marketing or token airdrops, and only relying on low enough thresholds and standardized access processes to obtain a large number of real, stable and useful tap water users.
These users are not equivalent to the users of the product; on the contrary, they form part of the products capabilities.
With enough nodes to provide bandwidth resources, Meson Networks product capabilities can better help other Web3 projects.
In order to facilitate understanding, we still use NFT small pictures in decentralized storage as an example to illustrate.
Before Meson, users in Singapore had to view pictures of their NFTs. Since the metadata of NFT is stored in IPFS, it is very likely that this image is stored on a node in the UK;
Directly accessing images will inevitably cause delays due to physical distance issues;
Due to the existence of Meson Network, there are a large number of nodes in the global network, and there are nodes in Malay and Thailand next to this Singaporean user;
These nodes can cache image data stored in IPFS in advance. The user does not have to go to the node in the UK when accessing, but directly uses the bandwidth of nearby nodes to access and download.
In fact, Meson Network is now the largest decentralized gateway behind IPFS and Arweave. The above examples of improving decentralized storage access are also happening in the real world.
In addition, the most worth mentioning point is that the services provided by Meson Network do not matter the nature of the service project, whether it is infrastructure or application, large or small, as long as it involves the transmission, access and acquisition of data in different regions, etc. Behavior, allocating appropriate bandwidth resources nearby will be useful.
For example, BNB Chain has recently taken advantage of Meson Networks global node distribution to shorten the state snapshot synchronization time on the entire chain.
Due to the large transaction data of BNB Chain (2.5 TB), it may take about 20 hours for different nodes on this chain to synchronize snapshot data, and due to different geographical locations, synchronization data must be faster or slower, and there will be slower nodes. It may become a shortcoming of the entire network;
When Meson is used, the time for synchronizing snapshots across the entire network is shortened to about 1 hour. Although users are unaware of the acceleration behind data synchronization, they are more like invisible guardians for the operation, maintenance and security of the public chain.
From quietly developing the network to now cooperating with well-known projects, the universal value of Meson Network products seems to have been confirmed;
But our next more interesting question is, is its business model sustainable? Between calling on users to contribute bandwidth and rewarding contributions, is the projects profitability healthy?
Use it to monetize and make contributions in return
If Meson Network is understood as a bandwidth resource pool, then both sides of the pool can be regarded as the supply and demand sides. The former contributes bandwidth and the latter uses bandwidth.
Corresponding to supply and demand, in Mesons specific product structure, there are two products responsible for receiving the bandwidth contributed by different nodes around the world, and one product is responsible for monetizing these aggregated bandwidth resources.
If you dig deeper into the business model behind its products, you will find that Meson has formed a relatively complete and self-consistent business closed loop.
Gateway X: Aggregates idle commercial bandwidth and provides CDN services
This product is mainly targeted at global commercial idle bandwidth. For example, resources in an enterprise data center (IDC) must have surplus and usage troughs. IDCs can contribute their idle resources to meet the file transfer needs of others.
The most typical usage scenario is the CDN service: cache the required files at an IDC close to the target user, and use the bandwidth there for transmission when the user accesses it.
From Mesons data dashboard, we can find that the currently connected IDC has more than 20,000 nodes around the world, and has a data transmission capacity of 12.5 Tib/s.
Gaga Node: Integrate idle bandwidth of residential and personal devices to facilitate edge computing services
This product is mentioned above and can be accessed by small devices such as home routers, computers and even mobile phones, forming a broader long-tail market.
The name of the product actually reveals its function: each little duck can make a gaga sound, just as each small device has certain computing and transmission capabilities.
In fact, this is more like forming a DePIN and IoT network. Many devices become edge nodes in the network and can serve edge computing scenarios: applications are initiated directly on these devices, generating faster network service responses and satisfying The basic needs of different industries in terms of real-time business, application intelligence, security and privacy protection.
Whether it is Gateway
IP Cola: Commercial realization based on large-scale node network
Therefore, IP Cola, another product of Meson, actually undertakes the task of making profit, using the revenue from service monetization to feed back the contributors of bandwidth resources in the previous two products.
Since Meson has a large number of data center nodes and home nodes from around the world, these idle IP and bandwidth resources can be aggregated and then allocated through the bandwidth trading market, thereby improving data acceleration/caching, anti-advertising fraud, network security, and data crawlers. , bringing value to other users in different regions.
Considering that this part of the principle involves knowledge such as IP, data and network, I will not go into too much detail here.
We can simply understand it as: Meson packages the gathered resources and forms services for various scenarios; others need to pay on demand to use these services, which constitutes Mesons source of income.
According to Meson Network team members, IP Cola is still far from the traditional company Brightdatas annual revenue of over 100 million U.S. dollars, but it is growing rapidly. The overall revenue has exceeded one million U.S. dollars since its launch half a year ago.
This can be counted as a real income generated in the real world, and it also means a business model that does not rely entirely on Tokens and is not Ponzi:
GatewayX and GagaNode obtain idle bandwidth resources from both the B-side and C-side, add nodes, and serve the data transmission experience of Web3 (or Web2);
IP Cola monetizes IP based on nodes in different regions, and at the same time replenishes the proceeds from the monetization to nodes that contribute bandwidth.
As a bandwidth resource platform, with clear supply and demand ends, coupled with a healthy and scalable revenue model, the more participants on the platform, the more obvious the network effect will be, and the larger the scale of the project will be.
Bandwidth trading market: a grand blueprint for breaking through physical boundaries
Meson Network’s existing products have achieved certain success, but they are still far from the ultimate vision.
Don’t forget that Meson still doesn’t have a token, which to some extent means that the potential of blockchain-based and token-based incentives has not yet been truly unleashed.
The current contribution and allocation model of bandwidth resources can completely transform into a spontaneous and automatic bandwidth trading market based on blockchain in the future:
Bandwidth providers can voluntarily join the market, provide idle resources, and obtain incentives in $MESON (the project’s native token);
Bandwidth demanders can search the market for suitable bandwidth resources for their own use and pay with $MESON tokens;
Other nodes in the blockchain network can pledge tokens to become network validators, ensuring that the supply and demand transaction records in the bandwidth trading market network are authentic and valid.
With such a bandwidth trading market, a more Cyrpto Native approach can be used to help Web3 projects break the physical distance boundaries caused by decentralization.
Different projects use tokens as a link to obtain better data access, transmission and usage experience, and ensure business data availability from a less detectable path:
L1 uses Meson Network, and nodes scattered around the world can better synchronize block status and data;
L2 uses the Meson Network, and the transaction records regularly transmitted to L1 can be better redundantly backed up/cached, and the classic idea of Dont Trust, Just Verify can be implemented;
Even AI can use it to utilize the bandwidth resources of local devices/nodes to better complete edge computing or multi-place joint computing tasks...
It needs to be emphasized again that the usage scenario of bandwidth resources is not as simple as CDN acceleration to watch videos, but is more closely related to the data availability that everyone often mentioned recently.
At the same time, from an external perspective, the global bandwidth market is a behemoth with an output value of hundreds of billions of dollars. If the Web3 project can really cut a small piece of the cake, it will be a magnificent blueprint.
This also shows from another perspective that Mass Adoption may not necessarily occur at the application layer first.
When the resource layer has a rigid demand for bandwidth, there are token incentives economically, and nodes are willing to join and continue to contribute, a healthy business model may be more solid and long-lasting than an unsustainable short-term narrative.
For ordinary users, it may be too early to study how to speculate on Meson’s $MESON token. As a personal node, join its network to contribute bandwidth and obtain income. When the main network goes online, the income will be converted into tokens. A more practical and convenient option.
The enduring hero behind the scenes
Finally, Meson Networks expansion in the bandwidth market reminded me of the relationship between the front and behind the scenes.
Web3s various infrastructure and applications visible to users are on the stage, but to perform this drama well, sufficient resources behind the scenes are needed to support it.
Meson Network is not a new project, but from the official announcement of financing in 2021 to now, it seems to have become timeless.
In this fast-moving, fickle and profit-first crypto world, how many projects are left that have not issued coins for 3 years and are doing solid work? How many people are doing behind-the-scenes work that is not so easy to detect? After crossing the bull and bear, how many people survived?
Doing infrastructure of infrastructure and playing the role of a behind-the-scenes worker, it is difficult to see the popularity and narrative in the short term;
But once the scale effect is formed, the business is extremely easy to copy and expand in batches. Becoming a resource for all projects, the value and benefits of being a hero behind the scenes are actually huge.
The gray line of grass and snakes lies thousands of miles away.
Gradual planning and delayed gratification may not be the only way to success.
