Recently, the Swarm mainnet went live, which made many users who want to participate in the distributed storage network slightly excited. In the distributed storage track of the blockchain, the project will use tokens to incentivize users to provide hardware devices to connect to the network to provide storage. Resources build distributed storage services.
Swarm has gone through the testnet stage for a period of time before, and users participating in the testnet stage will receive token incentives before August. These newly issued tokens have another purpose, which is to allow users to participate in node services.
This sounds similar to Filecoin, except that Filecoin can participate in the construction of nodes by staking FIL, and obtain rewards after providing effective storage. Mortgage tokens are the threshold for participation and the steps for node governance. Almost all distributed storage networks will be designed this way. Swarm is currently viewing the information and there is no mention of mortgage or lock-up.
Today in this article, we will dissect Swarm and show you some important information.
First of all, what does Swarm do?
If you have seen some publicity of Swarm, you will hear that this is a “platform” project of vitalik and gavinwood. In fact, the reason is that vitalik and gavinwood had anticipated the demand for Ethereum dapp and proposed the concept of a three-piece web3.0. This is It happened a long time ago. After 2016, I haven’t seen these two great gods mention Swarm. This three-piece set refers to: Ethereum’s computing power, whisper’s encrypted communication, and Swarm’s storage. That is, building a web3.0 application on Ethereum requires three types of infrastructure.
Therefore, Swarm is in line with the Ethereum ecology, which means that it will develop targeted optimization for the dapp of the Ethereum ecology. This is the difference between Swarm and other distributed storage projects. Even if the Swarm mainnet goes live, it will be an independent network rooted in the Ethereum network, rather than an independent public chain like Filecoin.
Swarm will mainly use incentives to allow users to share the storage space and bandwidth of computing devices. These will be assembled as a simple service for Ethereum users.
So there is a part in Swarm’s official document about how to build a dapp with Swarm. Let’s talk briefly. Swarm has a client called Bee. This Bee client was originally a tool for storing and sharing, that is, a tool for digging Bzz. , But because Swarm designed dapp development, it is possible to build a second-layer dapp on top of the DISC provided by Bee, such as nft dapp and so on.
Having said that, our key word understanding of Swarm should be a network that provides storage services for dapps in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Then, let’s talk about how to participate in this network?
The content of this part must first know the early Swarm test steps. The main network participation steps are almost the same as the test steps.
Swarm’s test was conducted on goerli, the Ethereum testnet.
Running the Swarm node on the testnet can earn gBzz tokens, which is the Bzz on the goerli testnet. When Swarm switches to the mainnet, you can have a data-rich and well-connected Bee node, and you can earn real Bzz from the first day of the mainnet launch.
Running Swarm nodes on goerli is very simple.
Step 1: Successfully download and start the bee and bee-clef clients. Step 2: Log in to the Matamask associated account.
In the official explanation document, because these operations are performed on the command line, not in the software that ordinary users understand.
So there will be a part about the operation explanation, mainly involving how to query the required information part and so on.
The gBzz obtained by the network nodes that participated in the test before is a kind of check. The latest update shows that after the mainnet goes online, these users can exchange gBzz to Bzz on xDAI. The process will be more complicated. You need to receive the aBzz airdrop on goerli first, and then you can receive the Bzz on the account on xdai after the time point.
In other words, in order for users to get the airdrop rewards, it still takes time to wait, and finally get the Bzz on Ethereum xDAI on August 2nd. After you get it, you can transfer these Bzzs to Ethereum.
In addition, the identification of Ethereum Bzz is also more important. The Bzz token contract address is:
0x19062190b1925b5b6689d7073fdfc8c2976ef8cb
Through the inquiry, we can see that the current maximum supply is 66,208,125. Because the distribution has not yet started, the Bzz are all concentrated in the contract.
It is worth mentioning that xDAI is a side chain solution for Swarm network transactions. Therefore, the airdrop of Bzz can be obtained, and xDAI is also the side chain of Ethereum, and it can also be transferred by bridging.
Knowing these ways to participate, the next important thing is how to participate after the mainnet goes online?
The basic operation after the mainnet goes live is the same as the testnet, but the key part is to update the new client. And whether there will be a specific economic model in the future, will it be pledged, and what is the amount of rewards and incentives for Bzz.
After reading this, should we care about one thing, what is the future of Swarm?
If we see the difficulty of Filecoin development, we can evaluate Swarm in this way, is that right? The answer may be wrong. First of all, although Filecoin also provides distributed storage for web3.0, etc., Filecoin’s independent public chain label will be too restrictive, and the ipfs technology can be implemented in other networks. Not necessarily using Filecoin.
The biggest advantage of Swarm is to consider the huge dapp ecology of Ethereum. The demand in the ecology may increase the amount of Swarm applications. But at present, there is a great resistance to which dapps will become the demand side of Swarm. ? Because Bzz has to be paid, this is not a simple block incentive model, but a supply and demand model. The only thing that can be verified is the dynamic market.
In addition, most dapps with storage requirements may choose layer2, so there is another set of solutions for storage.
It’s just that for Swarm, another advantage is that in its design, shared storage and bandwidth may accelerate the speed of dapp in a certain sense, optimize the experience, and may be a bright spot.
At the end of the whole article, it can be concluded that Swarm’s future has opportunities compared to other distributed storage, but the resistance it faces is equally huge.
For projects involving supply and demand like Swarm, it’s not just users sharing storage and bandwidth to earn tokens. It’s just maintaining the simple vitality of a network. The specific growth depends on the market’s spurs and beatings.
