In the early hours of April 17, 2024, Beijing time, the decentralized storage network ShdwDrive will conclude the second phase of its incentive testnet. With the Solana ecosystem gaining momentum and the positive news of being listed on Coinbase, this storage project is also attracting more attention.

The storage sector has been lukewarm for some time, but with the arrival of the bull market, a batch of storage projects represented by Filecoin and Arweave also saw an uptrend in February and March. Since the rise of Solana at the end of last year, ShdwDrive has already “come into its own,” rising more than tenfold from November last year to the present. After being included in Coinbase’s listing roadmap at the end of last month and listed on Crypto.com, its token price soared by over 50% in a single day, jumping from $1.4 directly to above $2.1.

Decentralized Distributed Storage Network Based on Solana

ShdwDrive platform is a high-performance cloud storage platform developed by GenesysGo, fully supported by a decentralized network of operators. The platform integrates the Solana blockchain completely, leveraging its innovative Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanism, which ensures the order and integrity of blocks through a time series. This integration not only enhances data security but also allows ShdwDrive platform to fully utilize the advantages of blockchain technology, such as decentralization and immutability.

In terms of functionality, ShdwDrive platform offers rapid bulk upload capabilities and comes equipped with a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Users can quickly upload large amounts of data to the platform through the bulk upload feature, while the CDN ensures efficient access to the data stored on the platform. The introduction of these features makes data uploading and access more convenient and efficient. Additionally, ShdwDrive provides a rich set of development tools and interfaces, including a Command-Line Interface (CLI) and multi-language software development kits (SDKs), allowing developers to choose suitable tools for development and deployment according to their needs.

With the surge in mobile computing power and data speed, ShdwDrive is leveraging the early-stage Solana Saga Mobile development to create DAGGER, a permissionless mobile computing and storage solution. Existing builders in the ecosystem will also receive support for this enhanced functionality, enabling them to utilize ShdwDrive in mobile applications. In response to the growing demand for artificial intelligence and gaming, DAGGER Mobile aims to apply distributed ledger technology to smartphones.

DAGGER Consensus Engine: The Core Technology of ShdwDrive

The DAGGER Consensus Engine is the core technology of the ShdwDrive platform, serving as a trustless decentralized consensus protocol. It employs a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) data structure aimed at providing efficient data storage and management for data-intensive applications. In traditional blockchains, data is organized into a linear blockchain structure, with each block containing a certain number of transaction details. However, in DAGGER, data is organized into a Directed Acyclic Graph, where each data node can have multiple parent nodes but cannot form loops.

DAGGER consists of four key components: Comms, Processor, Graph, and Controller. The Processor component is further divided into two sub-modules: Verifier and Forester. Hence, D.A.G.G.E.R. is often considered to be comprised of a total of five components. These components seamlessly collaborate to process, verify, and execute transactions asynchronously, analogous to the operations and functions division in an airport:

1. Comms: The airport’s control tower, manages all flights (packaged transactions), and coordinates with other airports (nodes/synchronization) to ensure every aircraft receives effective and efficient handling and is known throughout the entire airport network.

   Processor: The airport’s security and baggage handling system, including the Verifier and Forester, where the Verifier acts like a security checkpoint, is responsible for validating passengers (transactions) and ensuring no prohibited items (duplicates) enter the aircraft. The Forester is akin to the baggage handling system, packing passengers’ luggage (hashes) into containers (Merkle trees) and ensuring they are correctly loaded onto the correct aircraft (packaging), verifying baggage tags (signatures) when validating the containers (root hash) content.

2. Graph: The airport’s flight scheduling system, is responsible for managing and recording flight plans (Directed Acyclic Graph) to ensure all arrivals and departures occur in the correct order and notify all other airports (state synchronization) in a tamper-resistant manner.

3. Controller: The airport’s pilots, air traffic controllers, and ground crew. After determining the flight plan (consensus ordering), the ground crew performs necessary operations to ensure each aircraft is ready for departure, including refueling, maintenance, and passenger transportation (transaction execution). Pilots, air traffic controllers, and ground crew members can also reach agreements (consensus) on flight plans (adding more transactions), verify aircraft have landed correctly (forcefully inspect completed transactions), and report (membership management) new airports joining the airport network (nodes).

Unlike traditional platforms like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana, DAGGER’s unique design inherently integrates data storage and management. Compared to traditional blockchain consensus algorithms, the DAGGER consensus engine achieves parallel processing of data through its DAG structure, allowing multiple data tasks to be processed simultaneously, greatly improving data processing efficiency. Data nodes do not need to wait for confirmation of the previous block, nor are they limited by block size. This eliminates inter-block dependencies, enhancing the performance and scalability of the entire system.

Based on its parallel processing capability and lack of inter-block dependencies, the platform can achieve higher throughput, simultaneously handling more data tasks, and improving system response speed and efficiency. The dynamic adjustment feature of DAGGER allows it to adaptively adjust according to network load and data task requirements, maintaining system stability and reliability.

SHDW Token: Rewards, Punishments, Buybacks and Halvings

ShdwDrive aims to create a stable, valuable, and sustainable long-term community, and the most important means to achieve this vision is through its tokenomics model designed to bring value to network users and long-term SHDW holders. By reducing token circulation speed, adopting a halving schedule, and rewarding SHDW holders for participating in protecting and expanding the ShdwDrive network, as well as using shared staking and slashing mechanisms to enhance network stability and increase community participation, the platform’s economic management methods aim to transform token holders into active participants who actively contribute to protecting the network and benefit all stakeholders.

Rewarding holders for participating in the network through staking is a core component of the ShdwDrive economic system’s overall design, which aims to create value for both the network and the holders. shdwNode operators serve as the foundation of the SHDW network. Before connecting servers to the ShdwDrive network and receiving rewards, they must stake SHDW to ensure their position in the network, serving as a commitment fee to ensure that participants manage the network attentively and seriously. When a shdwNode is slashed, wallets associated with that node will be penalized, losing 5% of their staked SHDW. For regular SHDW holders, they can delegate their SHDW tokens to shdwNode operators through smart contracts and then share the rewards received by the nodes. This shared success model promotes community cohesion and motivates both parties to actively contribute to network growth.

ShdwDrive passes a significant portion of the final user payments (60-75%) directly to operators running shdwNodes as rewards and compensation for individuals, groups, or entities that own physical servers. This portion of income is not shared with SHDW holders who delegate their tokens to shdwNode operators. The remaining fees from storage payments are used to purchase SHDW on the open market and send the purchased SHDW to the release pool. This buyback mechanism helps maintain liquidity in the SHDW token market, ensuring a clear and verifiable link between ShdwDrive revenue growth and SHDW token value, aiming to make the ShdwDrive network token economy as sustainable as possible in the long term.

Additionally, to control the supply and enhance the value of SHDW, the project proposes sending 7,000,000 SHDW tokens back to the team, locked in a smart contract and released over time. According to the current model, the annual release amount paid to ShdwOperators (shdwNode and Audit Node operators) is 1,400,000 - 2,000,000 SHDW. This amount will halve every two years, reducing the number of new tokens entering the market. The project believes that this scarcity mechanism may increase the value of SHDW over time as it encourages network participants to become early supporters of ShdwDrive and DAGGER technology, creating a sense of urgency by providing higher rewards to early supporters.

The current open ShdwDrive incentive testnet Phase 2 is nearing its end and will conclude in the early hours of April 17th, Beijing time. According to the roadmap, ShdwDrive plans to launch Phase 3 of the testnet in the second or third quarter, where various node operators will be integrated. This indicates that ShdwDrive v2 is moving towards further decentralization.

This phase will involve strict observation and fine-tuning based on real-world network participation. Addressing errors and technical debt is crucial for ensuring platform reliability. The project states that the roadmap will be regularly updated to reflect new stages and features.

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