Distributed Computing Cloud Is The Way Towards A Web3 Future: A Phala Network Story

The true vision of Web3 is a decentralized network where no one entity controls it and the decentralized applications that are built on the network are open and trusted.

Web3 enables individuals to use the Internet without giving up their privacy and personal data to the small handful of companies that currently make up much of the network and its applications, both consumer and enterprise.

Built around security enclave privacy technology embedded in modern microprocessors, Phala Network’s distributed Web3 computing cloud is both versatile and confidential and offers a universal blockchain-based computation protocol that delivers on this Web3 concept of a decentralized, distributed, and scalable private compute platform.

All computation on the Phala network runs in a “trustless” secure enclave. This guarantees the security of the compute load including correct program execution, as well as confidentiality and privacy.

This concept of Trustless Computing is the cornerstone of Phala achieving a reliable, and distributed computing network. By separating the consensus mechanism from computation, Phala also ensures that processing power is highly scalable while providing the infrastructure for a powerful, secure, and scalable trustless computing cloud.

Moreover, the Phala Network can be freely combined with decentralized smart contracts, storage protocols, and data indexing services.

To ensure that blockchain users and computing power providers won’t be controlled by centralized cloud providers, Phala is a highly distributed network letting any compute node to join the network to provide usable and stable computing services.

Right now, there are now more than 20,000 compute nodes registered on Phala’s Khala network, including more than 15,000 servers. In total, these servers provide more than 120,000 vCPUs that contribute large-scale computing services for the Polkadot blockchain, representing the equivalent of nearly one percent of Amazon Web Services’ total compute power.

Enabling the Metaverse and NFTs

Phala partners have already started using the Phala Network to power both innovative metaverses and NFTs.

Blockchain startup Bit.Country recently selected Phala for its compute infrastructure and to enable the addition of privacy features for its virtual worlds, NFTs, and secret messages.

A decentralized metaverse platform with NFTs, token economies, and governance, Bit.Country enables anyone to create a metaverse with their own fungible or non-fungible tokens, timeline view, and 3D virtual world view. Community owners, influencers, and KOLs can also utilize the platform and protocol to grow and engage their audience.

Phala also powers RMRK’s NFT “art legos” on Kusama. Hosted on the Kusama blockchain, Polkadot's canary network, RMRK operates without the need for parachains or smart contracts. It is a set of standards that make NFTs multi-chain by default, rich and interactive, liquid and forward-compatible.

"Phala offers a way to decentralize critical server-level infra, finally freeing the concept of the metaverse from the clutches of cloud hosting services that can pull the plug on your verse and make it way less meta. We are happily exploring the potential to run the world of Kanaria on top of Phala's infra as a back end," says Bruno Skvorc, Founder of RMRK.

Additional use cases for building on Phala include:

• Web 3.0 rendering farms: providing NFT artists with affordable, decentralized, and privacy-friendly model rendering services through Phala’s Fat Contract.
• Web3 Game Servers: a decentralized back-end service for Metaverse platforms using Phala’s Fat Contract.
• Phala World: Innovative NFT role protocols that automatically generate growth and interoperability NFT roles for each address of Phala; these roles can be connected to mainstream Metaverse platforms.
• Universal Game Engine: a back-end engine based on plots of game space that can be built on multiple Metaverse platforms.

Because the Phala Network provides scalable, cross-chain compute services combined with privacy protection for Polkadot blockchain applications, we believe that it can achieve the vision of what a true Web 3.0 cloud computing platform will look like in the future of Polkadot, and beyond.