Ep. 676 Beyond Bitcoin: How the Blockchain is Bringing a New Era of Data

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, everyone, welcome back to the crypto 101 podcast where excited to have everyone back here in man. [SPEAKER_00]: We have another killer episode and the heat of this fantastic market cycle that we're in. [SPEAKER_00]: If you can't tell, I got a little bit of extra pep in my step today. [SPEAKER_00]: But how can you not win the market is performing the way that it is right now? [SPEAKER_00]: We're not just talking about prices.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about overall adoption. [SPEAKER_00]: really any kind of performance metric that you can look at. [SPEAKER_00]: CryptoMarket is just absolutely booming. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're hyped up, and of course we're going to have another awesome interview. [SPEAKER_00]: We got Phil Matars. [SPEAKER_00]: He's the founder of RIO with us here today. [SPEAKER_00]: Phil, welcome and it's good to have you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's great to be here, Brendan, before I did chat with you guys. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, well, man, today we get to talk about permanent cloud networks and solutions along those lines. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really fascinating title. [SPEAKER_00]: We've had a lot of people on lately and they want to talk about the ETS and they want to talk about tokenization and stablecoins. [SPEAKER_00]: And so this is a nice mix up from that where we get back to the core.

[SPEAKER_00]: of how blockchain is being used in different ways. [SPEAKER_00]: So, we're really excited for it. [SPEAKER_00]: Before we even kick this off, can you just walk us through a little bit about yourself and what got you interested and involved in this space and the first place? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, happy to.

[SPEAKER_01]: So my background has always been in computers and IT, specifically, I was an enterprise architect for a big for audit and accounting firm, doing all kinds of things in the cloud on premises, building all kinds of off-the-shelf systems or custom did a lot of stuff with Microsoft. [SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I had kind of discovered Ethereum and Bitcoin maybe in 2017. [SPEAKER_01]: I saw that there was this Ethereum Microsoft Alliance or Foundation or something as a call.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: Because dealing with a lot of infrastructure was kind of one of my focus areas. [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, hey, maybe I should take part in this world computer and get my hands on it. [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, sort of mind Ethereum for a while. [SPEAKER_01]: I went down that rabbit hole.

[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, like you said before on the financial aspects, you know, I went down that side too and, you know, have a lot of fun made a lot of mistakes, right? [SPEAKER_01]: But ultimately this concept of, you know, distributed permissionless open technology really, you know, scratched so many inches, you know, I'd grown up obviously most of my life on the internet being a millennial and you know, I'd seen so many

[SPEAKER_01]: So many technologies change, so many things come and go, links die, things go away, and you know this concept of you know a world computer really you know was super interesting to me and that ultimately led me to finding are we which was really this blockchain built for storm data.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that again, grew on me and really changed my whole perspective on networks and on a storage and keeping things for really, really long periods of time and just flipping this whole model of subscribing for something and kind of renting your data to owning it and just paying one time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's been quite a journey to ultimately get where I hear I am now, but Kind of yeah, all kind of shifted when it's I really discovered blockchain and kind of left that that previous career and I think it was 2020 when I You know founded permanent data solutions, which is now that the company that's Building the the protocols and you know the infrastructure for this decentralized network we call RIO

[SPEAKER_00]: So you know, you touched on this a little bit, but going back to like the core mission like what would you say the core mission of RIO is. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, you know, the core mission that I started with. [SPEAKER_01]: way back, you know, again, when I quit my job was really to take this concept of permanent storage, you know, this kind of magical thing that, you know, it's our weave network provides, take this permanent storage and get it into the hands of ever.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that was like, [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how that just that struck me like early on. [SPEAKER_01]: It was like this is what I wanted to do. [SPEAKER_01]: And I started that mission with a retail app called our drive, which is this web three drop box. [SPEAKER_01]: That's just super easy to use intuitive leverages this this network. [SPEAKER_01]: Are we to just store anything store any personal public private data?

[SPEAKER_01]: And through that journey, you know, we really discover that we needed to really go beyond just making an app to get permanent storage into the hands of everyone. [SPEAKER_01]: And we saw some opportunities on the infrastructure side of R.E. [SPEAKER_01]: Right? [SPEAKER_01]: R.E. [SPEAKER_01]: was really built to store data. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a layer one blockchain and, you know, we saw the needs for apps like our drive to do more than just stored data, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It had to access it really fast. [SPEAKER_01]: It had to use an index of query to find the data. [SPEAKER_01]: It had to, you know, the application and the assets itself needed a place to to be hosted. [SPEAKER_01]: So we saw the need to really build more.

[SPEAKER_01]: on top of this storage layer, and that's where, you know, this mission of getting permit storage into the hands of everyone really turned into making, you know, this permanent cloud network, right, a decentralized infrastructure layer that really makes it easy for anyone to store access, verify index query, you know, name any data on our beat, right, any data that is immutable and per system and replicated around this network.

[SPEAKER_01]: And again, are we the works a little bit differently than other storage platforms, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: You pay once to store your data forever. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not sure Brendan, if you've heard of our weave before or not, you have, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So it's simple model, you pay a bunch, you know, you pay more to [SPEAKER_01]: to own that storage, right, for 200 plus years. [SPEAKER_01]: It goes into a protocolized endowment, and it pays the miners to replicate that data.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we built this network on top of that fundamental permanent storage, and it's like AWS, or Google Cloud, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It gives developers easy tools and services for doing all kinds of things. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, uploading your data, routing it, retrieving it, querying it, RIO does all those many of those same things, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: But instead of going through a single provider, single region location, we have a decentralized network of independent gateways or nodes. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, instead of those big centralized hyperscalers, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So now this mission of getting permanent ducts, uh, uh, uh, permanent the storage into the hands of everyone now has expanded to networks of, of gateway operators who are, yeah, servicing, um, servicing this new, uh, web really, um, web that we've been calling the, the perma web. [SPEAKER_01]: because ultimately, every piece of information can't be tampered with, can't be taken down and live forever.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think for me, you know, again, this mission of like keeping things forever building an internet that doesn't forget, really, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, hits me to my core because I grew up, you know, seeing pages go away, now we're seeing governments wiping data, we're seeing companies go away in that data becoming an asset.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this mission of permanent storage really expands to just a permanent web, right, where it's, you know, securing knowledge, identities, all these different things, moving them from centralized services to, to, yeah, these kinds of decentralized networks. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's a big mission and one's been five years in the making so far, but really excited and you know wake up every day, really enjoying getting it out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now absolutely, you know, this idea of using blockchain for storage is definitely something that has been built upon over the last year.

[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I want to say like decade, half a decade now, especially it's been growing and growing for a lot of the points that you mentioned and I want [SPEAKER_00]: so that the audience here can understand just at a very high level what some of those core quick differences are and how blockchain is not only like different, especially like ARIO or ARIO and how it's different, but how it's actually in a lot of ways, like I think blockchain is just flat out superior.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure you would probably be, you know, biously agree with me. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we're both [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, but let's go through a bit of a lightning round here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about, um, let's make the first metric price, right? [SPEAKER_00]: How does price compare you touched on this a little bit? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you're going to go and you say Google Cloud, which I want to talk about here in a little bit for different reasons, uh, they've had some issues here lately, but we're just going to talk, you know, you know, Dropbox Google Cloud, something like that. [SPEAKER_00]: How does price compare?

[SPEAKER_01]: So the pricing depends on what service you're leveraging, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So I mentioned storage is one of the key primitives of our weave and of the RIO network and one of the building blocks that you make all of your apps on top of, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe for AWS, it's like S3, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: S3 is that building block on AWS that AWS itself makes their services on top of as well as [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, there's no doubt that permanent storage is, it's a premium product, right? [SPEAKER_01]: You could go to, I think it's prices.rdrive.io or AR fees.air.io. [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you basically pay. [SPEAKER_01]: paper bite, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So it's pay as you go and pay for the amount you want.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably around, you know, 20 or so dollars a gigabyte. [SPEAKER_01]: That price is set by the R we've network of miners. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not driven by a central or a call or a single team that's controlling that price. [SPEAKER_01]: It's based on the market and the miners. [SPEAKER_01]: And now that is securing that information for 200 plus years. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's based on what's called the Krieger Effect.

[SPEAKER_01]: The basic price of hard drives are falling. [SPEAKER_01]: right for various different reasons. [SPEAKER_01]: So as long as that continues to happen, paying into this endowment should pay for that storage for a very long period of time.

[SPEAKER_01]: So now, I don't know off the top of my head, what that breaking point is, you know, if you look at something like [SPEAKER_01]: S3, there's so many different tiers with all different access levels that's another big thing you have to consider. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not just storing, but accessing that data. [SPEAKER_01]: The RIO network has a free tier of access for all all data.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're working through more advanced tiers where sure if you want to consume a lot, maybe there's an additional feed that has to be paid. [SPEAKER_01]: But for that, [SPEAKER_01]: that free level of access, you know, yeah, if you compare it to S3's glacier, which maybe you can only access that file once a year and it takes a long time, you might have a very long break even point.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you compare it to some of the hottest to your storage things that are very fast, maybe the break even point is, you know, seven, 10 years, maybe a little bit longer. [SPEAKER_01]: What we've found is pricing and that, you know, if you just compare those two things [SPEAKER_01]: pretty difficult because you do get immutability, provenance, distribution, real resilience on that data.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, you know, there's a lot of things you get on the permanent side that you don't necessarily just get from something like S3. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's yeah, maybe price of, [SPEAKER_01]: of storage specifically. [SPEAKER_01]: There's also things like domain names, so you can buy a domain name on the RWV name system, which is a name system that the RIO network provides. [SPEAKER_01]: You could buy a 12 character name for a $10 or $15.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's very comparable to, you know, typical domain names that you see now. [SPEAKER_01]: And the renewal fees are also, you know, very small in the order magnitude of a couple dollars. [SPEAKER_01]: She also permanently purchase a domain name, something like that is not even possible. [SPEAKER_01]: on, you know, current domain registrars.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's, yeah, comparing prices, you have to take into account some of the benefits that you get on the decentralized side, because it is more of a premium. [SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't need those other things, it's maybe harder, harder sell, right, on price alone. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's, you know, that's the ultimate goal here. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, next lightning, next lightning round question, what is security?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, security of, you know, centralized cloud storage versus decentralized and what you're working on. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think there's a couple aspects of that. [SPEAKER_01]: So one, well, we're working on is a public blockchain, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Are we this public by Nate, by default?

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's to ensure, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the maximal spread of that information, um, so when it comes to privacy or security around that, uh, that has to be implemented on on the client side. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you are an organization that really needs a tight firewall around your data in services using a public blockchain network, um, [SPEAKER_01]: It's just inherited inherently more difficult, right, without adding other things to manage your secrets or token gate assets.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a huge consideration, but another big consideration is once data is stored on this network, it can't be tampered, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It can't be hijacked. [SPEAKER_01]: or taking away or crypto-locked and held ransom for Bitcoin or something. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a really important security aspect that maybe you could achieve in traditional clouds with a whole lot of other measures to support that, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: I would know I used to work at a company that had a million security requirements to protect data versus if you store that data in a place that can't ever be changed, it might actually [SPEAKER_00]: You know, speaking of security, I know that that recent Google cloud outage at the time of people listening this, it will probably have been, you know, maybe a month or two ago, what is that reveal about our over-dependence on centralized infrastructure?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, whether it's like an outage or like, [SPEAKER_01]: 23 in me thing where they were, you know, they were going bankrupt in their data was all for sale. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, these are like, for me, they're like wake-up calls. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like they should be wake-up calls for other people, right? [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be the last one. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be the last outage, right? [SPEAKER_01]: They happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: When Google Cloud goes down, when like hyper-scale or goes down, [SPEAKER_01]: entire businesses can grind to a halt, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Whether the business themselves is using Google or maybe they're using some other service, that's using Google or AWS that the business could effectively stop doing business or end up spending more money, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Data could disappear. [SPEAKER_01]: Websites can go offline, payments could fail. [SPEAKER_01]: Apps might stop working.

[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of times, fallbacks aren't really built in. [SPEAKER_01]: because it's expensive, it's expensive to build an app to work across different clouds and have that level of resiliency. [SPEAKER_01]: So everyone just trusts a single provider. [SPEAKER_01]: So it really shows you like, yeah, these single providers can be can have a really great up time, but it shows how fragile, you know, the centralized clouds can really be, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: There's convenience that associated with it, but you know, it's convenient until it's not. [SPEAKER_01]: And when it breaks, [SPEAKER_01]: It really breaks hard. [SPEAKER_01]: So we don't just need better up time. [SPEAKER_01]: We need better resilience. [SPEAKER_01]: We need infrastructure that can survive outages. [SPEAKER_01]: We need apps that are built to be able to use that infrastructure to survive those outages. [SPEAKER_01]: That outage might even be censorship, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That happens at a platform and individual level. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's really exactly why decentralized networks, blockchains, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Networks like RIO, are we exactly why we're built for? [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, they could be a plan B, but we're really trying to make it like it should be your plan A for this kind of information where it really makes sense to store it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, it's it's definitely is a bit of a wake up call and you said, you know, businesses come and they grind to a hold off this stuff, you know, we were impacted by this. [SPEAKER_00]: We are having calls and talking to, you know, clients and customers in our community and everything, you know, all of us came grinding to a whole.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because we're trying to use a number of these different platforms, that were using Google Cloud and all of us came to a hole and we're like, we can't do anything and we're kind of powerless, you know, we can't do anything [SPEAKER_00]: And everything does just come grinding to a hole. [SPEAKER_00]: So it is a bit of a wake up call.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, yet, and despite of that, you, I've seen you say, you know, the biggest risk isn't necessarily downtime, but it's permanent data loss. [SPEAKER_00]: Can you explain that a little bit further, and, I guess, what that means? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, you know, down time outages definitely a big risk, yeah, um, but that's hopefully temporary. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's hopefully they think system comes back online.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Once data is gone, it's gone forever and kind of things. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, this modern cloud model, it's not built for permanence. [SPEAKER_01]: The internet is not really built for permanence. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure, some stuff [SPEAKER_01]: that you upload or pages might stay there for a really long time or people might download or yeah, famous people. [SPEAKER_01]: They put content online.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just people going to download it and it's you know permanent for maybe that perspective. [SPEAKER_01]: But the internet is more built. [SPEAKER_01]: These cloud providers are more built for just recurring revenue. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you stop paying your bill, [SPEAKER_01]: you know, or if your storage provider changes their terms or has one of these catastrophic failures, you know, your data could be deleted. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of normal.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think you normalize that. [SPEAKER_01]: A little bit in Web 2. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's, again, it's okay for some pieces of information. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think the danger is that we're treating [SPEAKER_01]: maybe impermanent storage like it's permanent, you know, people might just assume that, you know, those mistakes, those actions don't happen.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you look at things like, you know, I've seen so much link right content loss, you know, link right in general. [SPEAKER_01]: It's [SPEAKER_01]: I really botched these stats all the time, right? [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like 30, 40% of the internet now is really suffering from link rot, not just web pages, but like journals, legal documents. [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like not just content loss, but like reference, the loss of referencing, or almost misattributed history, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think these are kind of these downstream effects of data just getting deleted. [SPEAKER_01]: deleted, assuming the cloud is kind of this archive when it's can be in some cases, but it's not in others. [SPEAKER_01]: So, again, Armada, we try to flip that, pay once and it's there forever, can't be changed. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just a different mindset.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a commitment to storing that information, storing [SPEAKER_01]: who uploaded it when these timestamps that also can't be changed and that you get the Providence now, this, you know, also the can't be changed going back to that source. [SPEAKER_01]: So it just goes beyond high availability and, you know, data permanence.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I get downtime, it can come back on, but these things, you know, you just don't get when you're kind of using this current non-permanent cloud level. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, do you think that permanent data storage is economically sustainable? [SPEAKER_00]: I know we talked about pricing and how this works on the back end, but, you know, I was just thinking about that question. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how does that fit in?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it's a huge question, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And it's something that we tried to [SPEAKER_01]: ensure not just the permanent data storage is sustainable but the other services that the RIO network provides. [SPEAKER_01]: So when you look at the economics of storing the data and this is I think that one of the benefits about our weave is that it's hyper focused on just that storing replicating data.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, you know, there's no smart contract platform or there's no permanent and, you know, and there's some temporary storage thing. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just laser focused on that. [SPEAKER_01]: And like what I was saying, you know, before the, you know, the core team for research, the team that developed the art we protocol, tried to be really conservative with the fees with the amount that you pay into that endowment.

[SPEAKER_01]: So as long as [SPEAKER_01]: hard drive costs continue to come down. [SPEAKER_01]: That sustainability aspect should continue to hold. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you were to look at the price of permanent storage now, it's not like the price has just, it's been up here and it's just continually going down. [SPEAKER_01]: That's because the network, obviously, are we even network launched eight years ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the protocols change miners are still [SPEAKER_01]: So that's one important thing to keep in mind. [SPEAKER_01]: And again, we tried to follow that similar model with the RIO network. [SPEAKER_01]: And for example, purchasing a permanent RNS name, right? [SPEAKER_01]: We wanted to make sure that paying into the RIO network protocol Endowment covers the cost of resolving and serving that name. [SPEAKER_01]: for 200 plus years.

[SPEAKER_01]: We also have leasing models, right? [SPEAKER_01]: We also recognize that some users might not want the permanence, might they might not need it. [SPEAKER_01]: We're looking at other ways for gateway operators to also earn fees for the access side. [SPEAKER_01]: right for other indexing or querying services. [SPEAKER_01]: Because again, apps, they do more than just storage or just domain names.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we want to make sure the system is completely sustainable from the perspective. [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't need a single centralized party to sustain it or subsidize it, so on and so forth. [SPEAKER_01]: So we stop a ways to go to make sure all of those incentives are. [SPEAKER_01]: are there. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that's, you know, we want to make this real.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not, uh, yeah, we're not trying to fall back to just needing hyperscalers to make the thing work in the future. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: No, for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: What does the regulation for this space look like? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in different parts of crypto, you know, I know in the path defy has been pretty harshly regulated. [SPEAKER_00]: Now we're starting to see that free up.

[SPEAKER_00]: But on this side of the crypto scene, what does regulation look like? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, is the US government strict on this? [SPEAKER_00]: Can US companies openly use this stuff as their [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't know restricted it at that moment. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: We've talked to a lot of different teams, companies, and different jurisdictions. [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, there's still so much gray area with all this, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Generally speaking, US companies can use permanent storage, whether that's protocols like RWeave or RIO, especially if it's public, non-sensitive content.

[SPEAKER_01]: For example, meta was leveraging the RIO networks uploading services back when they were using Instagram for their NFTs. [SPEAKER_01]: So they were taking NFTs, which might have contained PII, pictures of people, and upload them through our layer two. [SPEAKER_01]: It's called a bundling service. [SPEAKER_01]: They're a layer two service to make sure you can upload things at scale and settle them on our week.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a very concrete case of the [SPEAKER_01]: And there have been other examples of that specifically for NFTs or audit logs or other AI related data. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, as long as it can be or as long as the company wants to store it permanently, I think it fits. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, I think it's important to understand that it's this double-edged sort though, right, like from a compliance perspective. [SPEAKER_01]: Because you can't just delete something.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's permanent, no single person, mine or can delete it. [SPEAKER_01]: So if the law changes, or if the customer requests it, right? [SPEAKER_01]: There's limited things you can do on behalf of getting the network. [SPEAKER_01]: to delete it. [SPEAKER_01]: So again, that could be a pro, but that could also be a con. [SPEAKER_01]: Now from the perspective of, you know, moderating content, which you could see is the same as maybe deleting.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you can't access something is that same as it being deleted. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, the R-Weve network and R-I-O network go by this democratic content moderation system. [SPEAKER_01]: Basically, each node in the network gets to choose what they want to store. [SPEAKER_01]: Or what they want to serve. [SPEAKER_01]: The incentives for both the R-I-O network and the R-Weve network go against you in that case. [SPEAKER_01]: Right?

[SPEAKER_01]: R-Weve, you have to prove access that you have access to any historical data. [SPEAKER_01]: In order to get the incentive, [SPEAKER_01]: RNS, you need to, the network is actually observing all of the RNS names that are out there. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're not serving a specific name, because [SPEAKER_01]: some reason. [SPEAKER_01]: You won't get the reward for that day. [SPEAKER_01]: So the incentives kind of don't have any moderation.

[SPEAKER_01]: They want everything to be permanent, but each node can decide. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you are in a jurisdiction or if you are a company running your own node or gateway, you cannot serve that data out to your user base. [SPEAKER_01]: but they can always go to a different part of the network to still, you know, get that access.

[SPEAKER_01]: So in our, you know, my view, I think maybe regulation will eventually catch up, you know, the catch up to the laws of maybe around this, they'll catch up to the value of this immutable [SPEAKER_01]: layer that can store records and all kinds of information. [SPEAKER_01]: I think government agencies are already exploring blockchains, right? [SPEAKER_01]: For audit trails and record keeping, so I think it's only matter of time, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: The trend is heading in our direction. [SPEAKER_01]: We just hope that there is thoughtful enough people who are me on decisions. [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, when compliance does come, it's something that we can actually meet and make entry out. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mean, you make a good point. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is definitely a more permanent solution, which can be a double-edged sword.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this isn't one of those things where you're like, oh, man, I tweeted that out in a fit of rage, or I was a little bit overexcited, or maybe I was angry. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, you can't go back and edit it. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't go back and take it down. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, no, granted, this is a little bit different with data storage and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: But the same concept still applies.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to be a little bit more careful about, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: What's your button out there? [SPEAKER_00]: How you had any like, I don't know if funny's not the right word, but you know, maybe like funny or just crazy stories like that where people have come to you And been like, hey, man, we we messed up.

[SPEAKER_00]: We accidentally put the wrong thing out there [SPEAKER_01]: So probably the stories I could say here, branding would maybe be different than the stories I could say, you know, if we were off here or something. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's let's maybe put it, you know, this way. [SPEAKER_01]: There's been maybe some cases of, was it digital rights, millennium, act, whatever, DMCA, take down requests, you know, someone uploaded a mobile game.

[SPEAKER_01]: So a mobile game developer, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, because we are running, are we've got net, we're operating it, you know, it's kind of this community good for the whole ecosystem, because we're running that, you know, we're operating one of the gateways. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we get some of these requests. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, this old mobile RKG game, I never heard of it, but I guess someone uploaded the file. [SPEAKER_01]: So, that was interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's lots of vialic spam websites. [SPEAKER_01]: that people, you know, try to take advantage of, I guess, networks like ours to upload a fake outlook.com to try to get your password email. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, those, that's always interesting to see the level that people go through to scam other people. [SPEAKER_01]: There was a case when let's see if I could [SPEAKER_00]: You don't get yourself in trouble here. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see if I could summarize.

[SPEAKER_01]: There was a case where someone's trying to blackmail somebody else with some ingame in video game pictures or something. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was like seeing like some weird social thing. [SPEAKER_01]: And so like, you know, it does, it does happen, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And again, building systems to make sure this content moderation aspect is something that's feasible for gateway operators to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is not the side of the business, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're dealing with, you know, freedom on, on cyberspace, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So this is obviously going to come up with people really trying to see how they can do it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, you know, and in the here's the thing, that kind of stuff, it's going to happen in centralized.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to, you know, maybe people here that and I call them like, goodness, guys, you know, stuff's going to happen, whether it's centralized decentralized, there's always going to be scenarios, but you look at this and what it's able to do and there's so many [SPEAKER_00]: and compare us into the cons. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of great stuff that goes into this, you know, speaking of great stuff and kind of being a little bit more forward-looking.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did see that RIO is being increasingly used more frequently when it comes to AI companies. [SPEAKER_00]: what role do you play in supporting those efforts? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think a lot of people look at it and they say, oh, well, they need computational power and they might look at render and they might look at core weave or a kosher, some of those other players or maybe just like Nvidia, right, or AMD. [SPEAKER_00]: What role do you all play in the process of AI?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that compute is a humongous part of it of AI, and it's kind of, they can crazy to think that we ended up in this position where we're providing what my opinion, we're permanent storage can provide this really strong foundational layer for AI infrastructure, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And that was not something like, you know, I quit my job in 2020, you know, AI, we [SPEAKER_01]: We're calling it machine learning back then, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: So I did not envision that this would be such a strong use case, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Because AI systems are really the only good as good as their training data and the context that they're getting, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So that means the integrity of that data, the prominence of the accessibility of it. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, is like super important. [SPEAKER_01]: We can train a bunch of stuff now, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: If we lose that that context or where the data was trained from, then it's kind of hard to know, like, well, these are just answers, right? [SPEAKER_01]: We don't know, like the history from it. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so, you know, RIO supports AI builders. [SPEAKER_01]: I think a few different ways, maybe, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Whether it's for storing a mutable models themselves, mutable LLMs.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, if you used our drive myself to just upload, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: all different LLMs, like Lama 3 or Quinn 32B notes, you can upload 10, 20, 30 gig files, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So it's easy to drop LLMs on there. [SPEAKER_01]: It's easy to now be able to take your data sets and put them on there and now you have this kind of audit proof training data set. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm whether that's synthetic or real data.

[SPEAKER_01]: Any of the outputs for the audit logs or the decisions that the AI makes in that process could also be stored Right, and now you end up getting kind of the censorship-resistant memory for your agents or their workflows So we're seeing a lot of different teams You know big and small leveraging it for really the long-term storage of

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, these high value data sets or model versions, knowing that they could retrieve it and then verify that it's the same data that was uploaded previously, right? [SPEAKER_01]: With our gateway network, with RIO, you get fast multi-source access to that data. [SPEAKER_01]: Not just through one single, through one single spot.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think we have five, six hundred gateways that are on the network, all providing access to indexing, clearing access to this data. [SPEAKER_01]: That's really critical now, because we're living in this world where the source can be manipulated, AI's they're hallucinating already, so if you don't have dependable data, I think it's [SPEAKER_01]: it's going to be a crazier and crazier place.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we're not just supporting AI use cases, we're actively building for them, but we're also not, we don't consider ourselves an AI company. [SPEAKER_01]: We've yet to make that full pivot, I think this is just one of the many really strong use cases, but yeah, certainly embracing it and certainly trying to educate people on why a mutable prominent system's like ours is just really good for safe AI development.

[SPEAKER_00]: you know we'll be on this where do you see the biggest need or maybe even the most use so far because there are so many different use cases you know when we just look at flat file storage we can see this used for you know like you said sites applications AI oracles blockchain data gaming social platforms the list goes on [SPEAKER_00]: I guess this is kind of a two-sided question of where do you see the biggest need for this and what is actively using this the most?

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I mean, you just hit like all the biggest maybe like sectors. [SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh. [SPEAKER_01]: I think if you look at maybe the current biggest by [SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me, by volume, in terms of a number of pieces of information uploaded. [SPEAKER_01]: I would say it's more in the D-Fi and Oracle's space. [SPEAKER_01]: We have teams like Redstone that, you know, they're in Oracle for smart contracts and other, you know, D-Fi platforms.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're settling billions of data items. [SPEAKER_01]: month over month, and then, you know, teams are leveraging this information in their smart contracts or in their systems, whether it's for pricing or other, you know, Oracle data. [SPEAKER_01]: We have teams like Kive, they're like an archival platform that are taking other blockchains and archiving different parts of the chain or states that that chain can no longer support and fund, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's more expensive for a given chain to maintain that entire [SPEAKER_01]: you know, portion of it and have that settle onto our weed. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think kind of at defy oracle space. [SPEAKER_01]: There's, you know, by volume, I think there's a lot of of that. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, certainly, you know, from a maybe creative work publishing NFT, [SPEAKER_01]: aspect, I think that was always one of the earliest bigger use cases that really stuck since 2020, really 2021.

[SPEAKER_01]: Once out of T's, really became a thing, permanent storage. [SPEAKER_01]: It became a really critical component. [SPEAKER_01]: Because you figure if you're an artist, if you're creating an NFT, now you're saving that on S3 or CloudFlare, and you sell all of your art, and then you stop paying that bill for it. [SPEAKER_01]: Now you've rugged your users or they can no longer access that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So really for, that's been one of maybe, I don't think it's going to be the biggest use case. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: you know, spreading your thoughts on NFTs in general, but for me being, you know, musician, you know, creative, I really love providing that place for the individual to leverage permanent storage, you know, to go back to the original mission, getting into the hands of everyone. [SPEAKER_01]: Getting to hands of teams and companies is great.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's really something that the individual can use for their creative work, their memories, their documentation, music, to blogs, photography, I think creators want archives that can't be taken down or rebranded or go away. [SPEAKER_01]: So that's a big thing for me. [SPEAKER_01]: And we have tens of thousands of individual users leveraging the platform month over month. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, trying to think, you know, maybe the other kind of, you know, really good need.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, maybe go back to the individual, but it's not made for just. [SPEAKER_01]: just your files, now you can host sites and apps. [SPEAKER_01]: So decentralized frontends, maybe that's even just looking at Web3, how many times do we see? [SPEAKER_01]: Important Web3 frontends getting taken down more people losing access to them. [SPEAKER_01]: Those can also be stored in a resilient way and access through these hundreds of RIO gateways.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there's a really strong need for brands to have permanent sites pages, not just the data. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is one of the things, man, it's hard. [SPEAKER_01]: It can be used for so many things, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So, how do you pick and pick the best one? [SPEAKER_00]: You're picking a favorite child, right? [SPEAKER_00]: No, but [SPEAKER_00]: Now, but, you know, this it really is fascinating and we love this E-block chain used in so many different ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was there anything that we missed here? [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe any just general thoughts on this space moving forward. [SPEAKER_00]: We've had an exciting year so far. [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully we have an equally as exciting one going to the second half this year. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, you know, like we started the call, it's definitely exciting to see, you know, some of the movements happening now in the market.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would hope, you know, as being someone who [SPEAKER_01]: started in 2017, seen different cycles. [SPEAKER_01]: I hope, you know, this time around, people don't just follow the price. [SPEAKER_01]: They follow like the principles. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we, I hope we start looking at the utilities that are provided by these different networks beyond just the typical, you know, financial ones. [SPEAKER_01]: For me, crypto isn't about tokens or charts.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know that there's both really exciting things, but it's about building systems that are better for people, that are fair or more resilient, you know, or use our own, better than what we had before. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I hope people keep those things in mind as we get really excited, it's seeing Bitcoin go to, keep going to new highs and all that stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think if we, [SPEAKER_01]: If we try to anchor ourselves to these questions of what happens if this protocol disappears or who's in control or what values are being brought into this software, as long as we keep thinking about those questions, then maybe we'll avoid some of these hype cycles that in my opinion don't really help the industry as much and maybe fun more projects that matter in the long term.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, maybe hopefully people keep that in mind as we continue to see things moving the direction. [SPEAKER_00]: Certainly. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll fill. [SPEAKER_00]: We appreciate you coming on here, talking to all the good people out there. [SPEAKER_00]: Where can people follow not only what you're doing, but what you're doing over at RIO as well? [SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, I mean, you could follow me at, um, an X at my own area, so VIL, E and AR, iOS.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're at RIO, network, but I think they've got some underscores, A, R, underscore, IO underscore network. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, just go to our site, AR.io as well as tons of stuff on the hair if you're dev, docs.au.io. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, join our discord, really. [SPEAKER_01]: There's so many things you can build and we would love to hear from you, so please reach out. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you so much for coming in here, and we appreciate your time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Brendan. [SPEAKER_01]: Join us again.