Hello everyone. Hello, East Denver. That's why we're here. Um, my name is Roland Chai. I am CEO and co-founder of IoTeX.
Um, today I'm going to share something very interesting with you . It's a new decentralized protocol we've been working on since last year, called W3bstream. Okay, let me start with a story first. Some of you may be familiar with DePIN. It is a booming sector within the Web3 space.
It stands for decentralized physical infrastructure networks . Basically, it means you have a lot of machines or devices, right? You use a token to incentivize people to buy and deploy those devices and machines, linking them together to generate some kind of utility. That utility could be energy storage, data collection, wireless connectivity, and so on. And when the utility starts working when the utility starts working , the value returns to the token, keeping the flywheel in motion.
This way you get more machines or devices doing the same thing, providing greater utility. Of course, the token will also appreciate. This is called DePIN. DePIN is more like the intersection between DeFi, crypto or Web3 and the real-world economy. If you think about it, DeFi, crypto, and Web3 are still small, with a trillion dollars of market value compared to the real economy.
It's much smaller, but if we manage to combine both things... I think many people believe this will be the next big step for Web3, that's DePIN. I'll give you some examples here. This is a diagram from our friends Sam and Messari; They made a good map of all the DePIN projects. Half of them may seem familiar to you; They are server networks that provide computing, storage, and bandwidth, right?
Like Filecoin or Storj, etc. But the other half is quite innovative. For example, there could be wireless connectivity networks like Helium, right? They encourage people to buy a router that is installed in the garage with a large antenna on the roof, providing connectivity to nearby devices. This is an example of that.
And there are also location networks like Geodnet, which basically provide location services to nearby people or devices. And even more interesting, recently there are sensor networks like Dimo, Demo and also Hivemapper, which provide you with a very innovative device, perhaps to connect to your car or carry with you, and collect real-world data to generate some kind of test, such as a presence test, a safe driving test or even a good sleep test, right? So those crazy things can really happen. And, of course, energy networks are also important; Tesla has its wall battery, which you install at home to store energy and then exchange it with other people; that's the idea. And that was just last year.
Since the first quarter of this year, even more DePIN projects have emerged in the market, as you can see here. As you can see, there are some new names that you may never have heard of that will become a real driving force for the next bull run. That's why we're so optimistic about DePIN as a complete category, a new category within the Web3 space. My team started researching DePIN last year and we discovered that almost all projects have a very similar technical architecture, like the one shown below. On one hand, they have a user or device that provides data or utility and, on the other hand, they have a smart contract that manages the incentives and the design of the mechanism, while in the middle they usually use a centralized server as a computational oracle.
These servers take data from the devices and calculate a test that says, "Oh, your device is working very well." "That's why I'll give you five tokens today, right?" That's how that intermediary works. But of course, you know, because you're here at ETH Denver, the problem of centralized servers. There is always a lack of trust, and the code is not law, because a malicious engineer can change small parameters to grant themselves more tokens.
It's very easy. And of course, there is no composability, plus, with data coming from users' devices , there are many privacy concerns. That's why we started asking ourselves a question. we started asking ourselves a question. What if there was a new decentralized protocol that could continuously process large volumes of data and generate proofs for the smart contract, confirming that the job was done correctly?
This protocol is developer-friendly, reliable, offers composability, and provides ownership to the user. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that kickstart the next boom for DePIN projects? Because they can come here and build something quick, simple, and also, great, right? That is the story behind the birth of Webstream, the first of its kind in the Web3 space as a decentralized stream computing protocol.
It is open, decentralized, and can turn real-world data streams into verifiable proofs ready for smart contracts. That is the mission of this protocol and, as you can see, it intuitively sits between the device data and the smart contract at different layers. The main value it provides is that it can handle a large flow of data. You can program it... flow of data.
You can program it... I'll explain how it works. You can program what type of computation to apply to the data and, at the same time, provide confidentiality and more. I'm happy that we're close to launching the Webstream test network after almost a year of hard work. If you want to take a look at how it works and why it's valuable, please go to the GitHub repository.
So yes, if you want to read the code, it's there. Here I want to delve a little deeper into the technical side, but not too much, I promise. I want to explain how developers should use Webstream and how users should view it . As a developer, you first need to have your idea: what kind of DePIN are you creating, whether it's energy, driving to earn, sleeping to earn, or climate data collection. You need to have an idea and identify what type of device you're going to work with.
So, once you have your device, we have something like a device SDK; In fact, we offer Raspberry Pi, iOS, Arduino, uh, Goland, JavaScript, you name it, many types of SDKs that you can use to, uh, develop a small program on your device. So that's step zero, and step one is very interesting. You simply write a small applet You simply write a small applet ; it's a small piece of code to define the computation logic, uh, the business logic of computing on Webstream. Basically, you're saying, okay, when this data stream comes in, I want to maybe average the data points, giving a window of, say, five hours, right? So that's the kind of thing you want to implement here and deploy on Webstream, just like when you write a smart contract and deploy it on the blockchain, right?
A very similar paradigm exists here. And step three is to define your tokenomics. Okay, if this person sleeps well, I'll give them more tokens, or if this person, you know, has been in a place, their DeFi mining ratio or their reward rate will increase. So that's the kind of thing you do as a smart contract in your favorite layer one . So there's no difference with what you currently do when creating a DApp.
So, consider it done. Of course, you have to test and make sure everything works and is error-free, right? Take it for granted error-free, right? Take it for granted , and from the user's perspective it's very simple. The user simply buys this device from you and, you know, activates the device and puts it into operation, right?
Then, from that moment on, the device begins to send data to Webstream. As a user, you don't have to know anything about what's going on, but Webstream will magically do all the hard work behind the scenes and produce cryptographic proofs for the smart contract, and then the rewards or incentives are returned to the user, right? The user will be happy, huh, to have a device that you developed. So that's basically the Webstream development flow . So, if you want to delve deeper into, you know, how this works, what kind of code you should write, I highly recommend you join the workshop that will be happening in about, uh, maybe an hour from now, which is next door with my development team, Simon, Joseph, uh development team, Simon, Joseph, uh , Jose, Joi.
They will give you a very practical example of how to create a "pip" type DApp in 10 minutes using Webstream and your phone's data . This will be great. The following story. Okay, go on. So, Webstream is a backend protocol.
In fact, we also have an IDE for this, to make it very easy for developers to use . That's a screenshot of what Webstream Studio looks like. We're not alone, are we? You know, locked away behind closed doors imagining what the next big thing will be. No, it's not like that.
Actually, we are working with many pioneering DePIN projects. Many of them are still very small, but they are covering different verticals. Some of them are very interesting. I can give you some very typical scenarios of where they come from. " typical scenarios of where they come from.
" X-to-earn" is a very large category X-to-earn" is a very large category . We work on multiple projects here. One dedicates oneself to something like " here. One dedicates oneself to something like " sleep to earn" or "wellbeing to earn." The name is Health Blocks.
They extract data from Apple Watch, smart rings, and other devices to integrate it into their system and incentivize people to exercise, walk more, or sleep in order to earn tokens, and they successfully launched their product last quarter. And another one is like a demonstration, sorry. They do "drive to win", it's a big and very good project; They give you a device that you connect to the car, you drive, you share the data that proves you drive safely, and you get discounts on your car insurance. That's "driving to win car insurance. That's "driving to win ".
Another interesting case deals with data collection. We have two projects in our ecosystem that do this on their own. The first one has many weather stations deployed mainly in North America to have a collective view of climate data. Weather data may sound boring, but it is very valuable because you may not know about financial derivatives called climate derivatives. Many agricultural companies spend a lot of money on those weather derivatives.
and another company, another project in our ecosystem. They do something very similar, collecting data on air quality using hardware deployed everywhere to try to measure it. This serves as an example of crowdsourcing data from multiple devices to create a user-owned data product, and the third is very interesting: community-owned machine networks. We have some projects in the ecosystem. They work on decentralized 5G networks .
They have a large device that you buy and install, perhaps on your roof, to provide 5G connectivity to nearby devices. We also have energy storage networks . They're great, like a big battery you buy and install at home to store energy and then exchange it with your neighbors to earn tokens. And, of course, server networks will be important. For example, we work on a decentralized aggregator in the context of account abstraction.
If you are familiar with EIP 437, this is a concept that will be familiar to you. So yes, a decentralized aggregator will also be a type of client for webstream will also be a type of client for webstream . Don't just take my word for it. We have something even cooler than this presentation coming next Friday. Here is the location and time; If you want to join, scan the QR code.
You will see the best DePIN projects and the venture capital focused on them; We want to bring everyone together and let them shine. You will see Iotech's technology ; not only webstream, but also our own Layer 1, Bridge Wallet and other products. In addition, we have two great demos for you to experience the magic of webstream. One is an energy meter. It looks good, but I don't know how it works, and the other one is based on your phone's data.
That's the IoT part, but the most interesting thing is the demonstrations from our partners; My marketing team calls it the mini CES of Web3. I think that captures the spirit. Well, they won't just see software; They will see something truly tangible: hardware such as a car, a digital dashboard, or those routers, batteries, trackers, air quality monitors, data collectors air quality monitors, data collectors , and so on. They will all, in fact, be part of the event. So be sure to scan the QR code to see all the details and feel free to join us.
They are very, very welcome and, in short, I think that's all about Webstream. It's a new protocol that the IoTeX team has been working on for a year, and we're about to launch our DevNet, which is very close. So, if you want to take a closer look , feel free to follow us on Twitter and also through our website. Okay, great, I'll stop here to see if you have any questions. I'm happy to answer some questions here.
Forward. Yes. The question is about the Chainlink oracle. Do you work with Chainlink? Yes, we are very close to Chainlink.
In fact, Chainlink will also be participating in this event. Chainlink's oracle is a little different from what we do, because they are very good at delivering small pieces of high-value data, like price data, right? And Webstream focuses on processing large volumes of data, where each piece of information has a very low value; that's the difference. In a way, they are at both ends of the spectrum they are at both ends of the spectrum . Great, any other questions?
Good. If there are no further questions, I believe that's all. You'll also find many people wearing green t-shirts like mine here right now. If you're interested in working with us, please come and say hello. Thank you all very much.
Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.