The Enterprise NFT Storage Solution
This week: a new Filebase one-pager about enterprise level NFT storage, publishing IPFS pinning provider records to the DHT, and more!
This Week At Filebase:
This week, Filebase published a new one-pager: The Enterprise NFT Storage Solution. This one-pager details how enterprises can utilize different NFT use-cases, and why it’s vital to use a storage provider like Filebase that provides enterprise-level redundancy, reliability, and security. Check out the full one-pager here:
One-Pagers — Filebase
docs.filebase.com
One-pagers are short-form technical content similar to a whitepaper or eBook, meant to discuss a specific topic or technology in depth. Find our Filebase One-pager documents below!
Publishing IPFS Provider Records to the DHT
In the world of IPFS, what is the DHT, and why is it so important for pinning providers to publish their records to the DHT? Filebase’s blog post this week details it all:
IPFS: Publishing To The DHT — filebase.com
A Distributed Hash Table (DHT) is a method of mapping keys to their associated values. They are fundamentally databases of keys and value pairs that are split across all the peers on a distributed network.
My Personal Highlights This Week
What is a Blockchain?
A blockchain is a peer-to-peer network comprised of individual devices, often called nodes. A peer-to-peer network is a computer network where each network participant is connected to every other participant on the network. Each node on the network can act as a server and provide information to any other node that requests it.
Blockchain networks are characterized as being decentralized, distributed, and immutable ledgers of information sometimes referred to as distributed ledger technologies. The purpose of a blockchain network is to provide a secure method of transacting, recording, and keeping track of data and its associated information. Blockchains are designed to record digital information in a way that cannot be deleted, altered, or interfered with in any way.
To create a blockchain, multiple nodes are connected to a peer-to-peer network. A node can be any computer hardware, from a personal computer to a dedicated compute server. Nodes are connected to the network using unique, special software containing the blockchain’s network information and a copy of the current blocks on the chain.
Once a node has been added to the blockchain, the node’s physical resources, such as processing or storage components, are available to be used by the network to process and validate transactions. Through this self-election process, blockchain networks replace the workflow of creating server farms or data centers dedicated to providing compute resources in one geographic location.
Blockchain networks can either be public or private regarding the ability of users to join them. On a public blockchain, also known as an open blockchain, anyone can openly join and establish a node on the network. The software to join the blockchain is publicly available for download, regardless of the hardware or location of the node. On a private blockchain, the network’s governance is often controlled by a single entity and used by an individual corporation or organization.
When a transaction has been verified by the blockchain and determined to be valid, the transaction is marked as complete and is added to a ‘block’ on the network. A block is a collection of verified blockchain transactions uploaded to the network that gets apprehended to the existing block list, thus creating a chain, hence the term ‘blockchain.’ A block is comprised of several verified transactions, sometimes even hundreds. Each block added to the network is identified with a unique cryptographic hash. It contains multiple transactions along with the hash of the block that came before it to keep a chronological record of the network’s transactions. The first block on a blockchain is known as a Genesis block, and it is the only block that does not contain a hash of the block that came before it.
When a transaction has been verified but has not yet been included in a block and written to the network, the transaction waits in what is known as the mempool. The mempool uses a mechanism called Replace By Free (RBF), which allows transactions with higher fees to supersede earlier transactions that had lower costs. When many transactions are waiting idly in the mempool, network congestion rates become heightened, and the average time for a block to be written increases.
Once a block has been added, it is permanently part of the blockchain and cannot be changed or deleted. Each node that is part of the blockchain stores its own personal copy of the blockchain’s transaction history on the node’s local hardware resources, resulting in hundreds or thousands of simultaneous backups of the blockchain’s transaction history.
This allows the network to identify fake transactions that might be presented to the blockchain in a malicious attempt to steal cryptocurrency or hack information. For a successful hack like this to work, 51% of the nodes on the blockchain would have to have their transaction histories simultaneously altered to reflect an illegitimate transaction, either through 51% of the computing resources on the network being modified for invalid proof-of-work, or 51% of the staked currency on the network being held by a malicious party.
Each node on a blockchain network has the same permissions and authority as every other node. There is no central authority in any blockchain network.
There are hundreds of different blockchain networks, with more being developed consistently in the Web3 ecosystem. Each blockchain is unique and separate from every other blockchain, often with its own native cryptocurrency and technical attributes. Transactions on one blockchain cannot be used or accessed from another blockchain by default unless a blockchain bridge or Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) is used.
This chunk of text is an excerpt from my book, ‘The Ultimate Web3 Pocket Guide’. If you liked this, you’ll love the full 540-page book. You can get your copy here:
The Ultimate Web3 Pocket Guide: Mongeon, Jessie: 9798841432968: Amazon.com: Books — www.amazon.com
The Ultimate Web3 Pocket Guide [Mongeon, Jessie] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Ultimate Web3 Pocket Guide
What’s Next?
On November 9th I’ll be giving a talk about API documentation through the ‘API The Docs’ organization. You can register for the event here:
Jessie Mongeon | API the Docs — apithedocs.org
About the talk: Web3 is one of the fastest-growing spaces on the web right now, with thousands of new projects emerging every week. Each project aims to fill a gap in the space by providing a new technology How do we keep up with documentation, and what should be prioritized for these projects as they scale?
At the end of November, I’ll be attending DCentral in Miami. More details to come on soon on that front!
That’s it for me this week, have a great weekend everyone!
