In the crypto world, narratives dictate market trends—where expectations lie, hotspots emerge. In today’s surge of AI+Crypto, have you considered if there’s a core narrative that spans Web2 & Web3 and AI?

The answer might be cloud computing. Whether it’s bridging the digital age’s three pillars from Web2 to Web3—computing, storage, and communication—or the thriving AI field’s three key elements—data, algorithms, and computational power—computing/computational power play an indispensable role.

This article focuses on a crypto newcomer, WeTEE, positioned as a decentralized confidential cloud computing infrastructure, and explores how this DeAI project aligns with the current AI craze and whether it could bring a fresh dynamic to the AI+Crypto track.

WeTEE: Decentralized Confidential Cloud Computing Infrastructure

As is well known, the traditional cloud service market is dominated by internet giants like AWS, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud, with one glaring issue: reliance on centralized cloud servers. This means developers/project teams inherently trust their cloud service provider, essentially tying their trust to the reputations of one or several giants.

This equates to handing over data autonomy and privacy security to Web2 giants, a concerning trend given the frequent data breaches in recent years, causing severe losses for individuals and institutions. Therefore, regardless of how developers/project teams view “decentralization”—a core issue in the Crypto world—it’s far better to design mechanisms that make it impossible for providers to be evil (‘Can’t Be Evil’) rather than trusting that they will ‘Do No Evil’.

In this context, the advantages of decentralized confidential cloud computing services are self-evident. They not only ensure the decentralized nature of cloud computing and maintain data security and privacy but are also crucial in enabling broader DePIN business logic, reducing cloud computing service costs through token incentives.

However, the decentralized cloud computing service market is still in its nascent stage—the top AI track projects like Bittensor (TAO) have become leaders in the decentralized algorithm track, with Masa Network playing a leading role in the decentralized data field. The competition in the decentralized computational power market is fierce, with new and old players like io.net and Akash primarily vying for computational power supply.

If we delve deeper into decentralized cloud computing, there is still an ecological gap with mature Web2 cloud computing solutions at the foundational level. The high cost of transforming confidential computing technology, the lack of good solutions for rapid and secure program deployment within the industry, and the inability to meet the application functions required by Web3 are limiting its development momentum.

Therefore, the second half of the decentralized cloud computing market urgently needs a comprehensive set of blockchain development tools oriented towards Web3, offering solutions that meet the needs for decentralization, confidential security, low latency, and low cost.

From this perspective, WeTEE perfectly fills this niche:

Any DePIN/Web2.5/AI application requiring low-latency and high-computational power services can opt to deploy on WeTEE, obtaining a generic cloud computing solution just like traditional cloud services.

WeTEE combines the container orchestration system Kubernetes, Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), and blockchain architecture to ensure deployment flexibility, as well as the security and reliability of application hosting. Additionally, WeTEE optimizes the application packaging process, allowing users to quickly complete confidential packaging of applications by modifying TEE configuration files and Docker image files, a process that can be shortened to less than 10 minutes!

Because of this, WeTEE offers a comprehensive, side-effect-free trusted computing solution in the form of container services, providing one-stop underlying computing power support and hardware-level security protection. In simple terms, it is not just for Web3 or Web2 users but allows all protocols based on smart contracts, web or mobile clients, and AI enterprises to reliably, securely, and quickly deploy in a decentralized cloud computing environment.

Strong Compatibility and Security Positioning

How does WeTEE differ in technical architecture compared to traditional centralized or decentralized cloud deployment solutions?

We can briefly summarize the operating mechanism of WeTEE. As mentioned above, the comprehensive technical architecture of the entire WeTEE network is based on the container orchestration system Kubernetes, integrating Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and blockchain solutions as the underlying framework. The main feature is the simplification of the entire process of packaging and deployment requirements.

WeTEE provides a new way of program deployment where developers/project owners only need to adapt and modify once to “foolproof” deploy various traditional software services and scripts, reducing the time to a matter of minutes, and thus enjoying the security services of decentralized cloud computing.

On the blockchain side, WeTEE uses Polkadot’s Substrate framework. By modularizing the basic underlying design of the blockchain, developers can “call with one click,” saving the original complicated workload and greatly improving developer efficiency, allowing more focus on business logic development. In the container part, WeTEE uses the container orchestration system Kubernetes. The biggest advantage of this design is to ensure that code execution is not affected by the underlying hardware.

Meanwhile, WeTEE has developed a dedicated TEE Operator for trusted computing to interact with the blockchain. Once the Operator receives operation instructions from the blockchain, it will mobilize the Kubernetes cluster through an Agent and create application containers.

Subsequently, Kubernetes will perform confidential injection into the application container, granting it hardware-level security protection to safeguard data and computations from external threats, ensuring data confidentiality and computational integrity even in the face of third-party intrusions.

Based on this, WeTEE can provide a visual UI interface, allowing developers to view the running status and operational conditions of applications in real-time after deploying containers. Moreover, WeTEE’s innovative solutions for smart contracts and confidential containers are particularly noteworthy.

• WeTEE will automatically generate smart contracts based on the application’s resource requirements and deployment needs, promoting a shift from traditional infrastructure management to autonomous operations based on smart contracts. As a result, WeTEE has significant advantages in node execution compared to other platforms.
• Simultaneously, WeTEE’s confidential containers generate proof of work during operation, synchronizing it to the blockchain to ensure data confidentiality and computational integrity, and to achieve accuracy and verifiability of computational results, which are immutable.

In summary, this means more Web2 & Web3 participants can easily access the confidential cloud computing resources they need, collectively advancing the application of blockchain technology across various industries and taking solid steps towards a truly decentralized, secure, and trustworthy future.

Token Economics and Value Capture Mechanism

According to official disclosures, WeTEE’s token allocation includes 45% for the project treasury, 15% for foundation operations, 15% for fundraising, 10% for the community, 9% for projects and early contributors, and 6% for advisors and accelerators. The overall allocation focuses on project operations, with a relatively balanced proportion for the founding team and VC.

What is particularly noteworthy is WeTEE’s in-depth value capture mechanism in token economics. Since WeTEE uses Polkadot Substrate as its infrastructure, they have chosen to broadly accept various tokens within the Polkadot ecosystem as payment options for computing services.

This means WeTEE users can use most tokens in the Polkadot ecosystem, such as DOT, KSM, and other tokens, to directly exchange and pay for consumed computing resources. This undoubtedly takes full advantage of the Polkadot network’s cross-chain capabilities, facilitating asset circulation between different blockchains, breaking down single circulation field barriers, allowing users to mobilize resources on a wider scale, reducing usage thresholds, and enhancing overall ecosystem vitality.

More critically, this “any Polkadot token can be used to pay for services” approach is expected to make the WeTEE network the settlement layer of the entire confidential cloud computing service ecosystem. This maximizes the use of WeTEE tokens throughout the ecosystem as settlement tokens, thereby realizing comprehensive empowerment advantages—directly capturing the growth dividends of computing power and node numbers across the entire WeTEE network ecosystem.

Team and Future Roadmap

The founding team of WeTEE is composed mainly of veterans in the internet and crypto development fields. The core developers participated in the Polkadot Summer Hackathon in 2023 and won first prize with their project DTIM. In 2024, they received a Level 2 grant from the Web3 Foundation, making them a promising entity in the confidential cloud computing sector within the Polkadot ecosystem.

In March 2024, WeTEE completed its project proof of concept (POC). Besides initially supporting Polkadot, they plan to further support Ethereum and the TON ecosystem in the future. This means that users and developers across various public chain ecosystems will be able to utilise WeTEE’s confidential cloud computing services, helping WeTEE become a foundational AI+Crypto computing power infrastructure, capturing the value of computing power demand across the entire network.

The official roadmap indicates that in the second quarter of this year, WeTEE will achieve compatibility with the TONM blockchain, allowing users to log in using the TON wallet and launching a Telegram MiniAPP to reach up to 900 million potential global users, thereby expanding its service user base.

In the fourth quarter of this year, WeTEE will also research and integrate new libos solutions for Intel TDX and Nvidia SEV, support runtime environments for ink! and Solidity, and expand TEE and contract calling protocols.

Summary

Overall, WeTEE’s vision is undoubtedly ambitious, aiming to become the core computing power service component encompassing both “Web2+Web3” and the global developer ecosystem. By building cross “Web2+Web3” computing power infrastructure, the future holds significant potential for WeTEE, though it will also be filled with challenges.

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reposted from [techflowpost], originally titled “Three-Minute Read on WeTEE: A New Decentralized Cloud Service Solution for Confidential Computing,” with the copyright belonging to the original author [小河River]. If you have any objections to the repost, please contact the Gate Learn team, and the team will handle it promptly according to the relevant procedures.

2. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author only and do not constitute any investment advice.

3. The Gate Learn team translates the article into other languages. Without mentioning Gate.io, the translated articles may not be copied, distributed, or plagiarized.