Folder Protocol

Folder protocol will benefit especially for decentralizing data, building and running distributed applications, and implementing smart contracts that operate on large volumes of data. Additionally, it also benefits the users for the faster retrieval and wider distribution of content; anyone can participate contributing to the Folder protocol ecosystem by node operating, mining and offering storage services.

It is not an exaggeration to say that today’s world wide web services hold the same level of

efficiency to publish content on the web without having to rely on a specific company or

service provider. Ever since the giant IT corporations such as google and Facebook started to

dominate the services of users’ data, there has been a constant issue raised regarding users’

privacy protection and data collection. As a result, users in the world began to question

whether they should trust the transparency of these service providers, thus creating the

wave of others to release their product by improving the efficiency, data protection, and

user-friendliness. This ‘wave’ has acknowledged the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT),

popularly known as Blockchains, as the core building block of Web 3.0. A Blockchain is an

immutable and append-only ledger that stores the network state. Distributed consensus

between all the network nodes is required in order to extend the blockchain and store the

critical network data among the network nodes.

Therefore, it could be prohibitively expensive to store any other kinds of data into the

blockchain. For multiple use cases, it may be more efficient to store other non-critical data in a

secure fashion close to the security level of the blockchain.

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a peer-to-peer distributed file system that seeks to

connect all computing devices with the same system of files. In some ways, IPFS is similar to the

Web, but IPFS could be seen as a single BitTorrent swarm, exchanging objects within one Git

repository. In other words, IPFS provides a high throughput content-addressed block storage

model, with content-addressed hyperlinks. This forms a generalized Merkle DAG, a data

structure upon which one can build versioned file systems, blockchains, and even a Permanent

Web. IPFS combines a distributed hash table, an incentivized block exchange, and self- certifying

abstraction of all file information.

Folder Protocol is a decentralized IPFS network that ultimately works as a layer-2. Folder

Protocol's second layer solution to the decentralized storage to bring enterprise level

scalability will be implemented in stages. Folder Protocol will be focusing on developing and

releasing a comprehensive solution that can bring enterprise scalability to the different

decentralized storage protocols in the market.

Most of the current IPFS networks ensure that data is safely stored. However, the processes of

storing (sealing), verifying (proving) and unsealing (for retrieval) are computationally expensive

and can take time. This is specially relevant for the retrieval of data, which should happen as

fast as possible.

Folder Protocol was founded to improve the currently limited knowledge, research and

development in the decentralized storage infrastructure(sector). The first stage of the

Folder Protocol is designed to specifically address the scalability and latency issues of

current IPFS and filecoin networks. From a scalability perspective, the core issues affecting

the scalability are how Distributed Hash Table(DHT) works and how DHT algorithm looks up

the content and peers. Since the resources are the core with the IPFS network, the speed of

node connection to store / retrieve requested data is the most significant factor. However,

in order to increase the speed of the node connectivity in the current IPFS network, more

powerful resources are in demand. Servers, thus, would perform better for data retrieval

and node discovery in a highly connected network instead of the IPFS base layer.

1) What if web servers shut down?

2) What if the network to the web server gets lost?

3) What if there are too many clients requesting a web server?

4) What if the web server loses files?

5) What if the size of a file requested to a web server is too large?

6) 90% of Filecoin’s nodes are located in China

At Folder Protocol, we are developing potential solutions that directly solve these

scalability issues on decentralized storage such as IPFS networks. The first of such

solutions is based on a highly connected Virtualized Gateway Subnodes Network using

dedicated IPFS Network Gateways.

Folder Protocol’s Virtualized Gateway Networks come with a built-in data availability

protocol to make sure the data is stored on at least 67% of virtualized subnodes in the

Gateway Network. Once a virtualized subnode creates a block proposal it will

communicate it to other subnodes in the Gateway Network using the data availability

protocol. The data availability Protocol guarantees that the message is transferred to the

supermajority of the subnodes in the Gateway Network.

When Bob requests data on the IPFS network, the IPFS protocol finds the nodes that have the

data. The network doesn't care if it is finding the nodes that are decentralized or centralized.

With IPFS, resources become important. The more connections a node has with other nodes,

the faster it will be able to find nodes with the data and have its own data be discovered.

However these extra inter-node connectivity demands more powerful resources. Servers, thus,

perform better for data retrieval and node discovery in a highly connected network instead of

the IPFS base layer.

Folder Network's IPFS solution for decentralized storage is operated by a group of Virtualized

Gateways of Subnodes of IPFS Network. These subnodes are selected from the subset of nodes

in the FOL network and are executed on all of the subnode's computational/storage resources.

These Virtualized Subnodes form a network of IPFS Gateways running dedicated IPFS Network.

Since the nodes in these Gateways are highly connected, up to 100x-1000X, achieving enterprise

level scalability and performance for data storage and retrieval are instantly achieved.

Bob, a data heavy user or a business who is building a web3 application can avoid DHT lookups

by joining Folder Network and using the Virtualized IPFS Gateways Network to both save and

retrieve large amounts of the data instantaneously, achieving the speed and performance

similar to Amazon or Google Cloud storage provides.

Alice, who wants to bring her storage services to Folder Network, can request to join as a

virtualized Subnode in a Gateway Network and get compensated for services offered. When

Alive joins as a node in the folder Network, the Folder Protocol makes Alice node a highly

connected node in the Virtualized Gateway Network offering 100-1000X speed and performance

for content discovery.

Bob can specify his/her desired network and storage connection configuration and submit the

payment for the duration that they would like to access the network resources to run the

network. The nodes in the Virtualized Gateway meeting the specified computational and storage

requirements in the Bob's configuration will be assigned to participate in the Virtualized

Gateway Subnodes Network. With such highly connected dedicated IPFS Gateway Networks, the

data creation, access and retrieval will become instantaneous and will be comparable to the

performance of Amazon and Google Cloud solutions.

In the initial phase, all the computational and storage resources in the Virtualized Gateway

Subnodes Network will be treated equal. But as the Folder Network evolves, we will need

specific Virtualized Gateway Networks specializing in the storage and computational needs in a

specific domain. For example, we can have separate Virtualized Gateway Networks for (1) a

network with scientific data commons to facilitate decentralized Artificial Intelligence and Deep

Learning systems, (2) a decentralized network of exchanges that have their order books of all

financial assets (3) a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that shares all of its data

through Folder Network.

For verifying storage, Folder Protocol will be using a more secure and efficient methodology of

"commit-then execute" message execution rather than a traditional challenge-response signature

scheme.

In zero-knowledge identification protocols, neither party trusts each other. With this approach,

exactly nothing about the secret is revealed to the Verifier except that it is Valid. The core idea to

achieve this comes from Interactive Proof Systems.

Folder Protocol uses VDFs to find trustless and efficient solutions to measure the passage of time using the commit-then execute approach based on the Verifiable Delay Functions. The exact setup details of such VDF scheme will be discussed in the future revisions of the white-paper.

A big advantage of Folder Network of Virtualized Gateways of IPFS Network is the ability to switch between networks if a node decides to make its data available across other Gateway Networks. The node will request a change to Folder Protocol Node Monitoring Service and the Folder Protocol will process the request and make the inter-gateway connection without losing any node's data. The node preserves all the data and its configuration and makes its data

available in a different Virtualized Gateway Network.

Folder Protocol Manager exists on the mainnet and serves as the entry-point to the Folder ecosystem. It will manage the orchestration of all entities within the Folder Network including the Virtualized Gateway Networks creation/destruction, Node creation/destruction, economic incentives related to storage creation/retrieval, bounties, etc.

To be identified as a node in Folder Network, the node must execute Folder Protocol Backend

Service(Daemon) and the Folder Protocol Manager will verify the network hardware and

software requirements for the node. There are different types of nodes as described above.

When the node passes the verification, the Folder Protocol Manager passes the request to the

network and adds to the network as a node based on the configuration request. After it is added

as a node, the data availability protocol will assign a large number of inter-connected peers to it

making the new node highly connected for enterprise scale performance. The Folder protocol

Manager continuously monitors the performance of the node at each epoch for continuity of

the node operation within the dedicated IPFS Gateway Network.

When a node submits a request to exit the Virtualized Gateway Network, the Folder Manager

evaluates the request and the node has to wait a pre-assigned time period before the node can

be destructed from the Gateway Network. During this time, the data and connectivity of the

nodes gets readjusted within the Gateway Network.

As explained above, when a user requests Virtualized Gateway Network, the user provides their network and storage configuration and submit the payment to the Folder Manager. In the beginning, these requests will be evaluated uniformly across the resources of subnodes. But in the future versions of the Folder Protocol, the user will be able to specify granular configuration parameters for the number of virtualized subnodes, their network & storage bandwidth, number of signers, and the size of the virtualized subnodes in the dedicated IPFS Gateway Network.

For additional security, the users will be able to enable periodic shuffling of the virtualized subnodes to avoid any collusion. The Folder Protocol Manager will process such virtualized subnode shuffling and the shuffling time period.

● Miner/Client provides computing power to Folder Protocol, ultimately contributing to the Filecoin network and receiving FOL as a reward.

● Folder Protocol functions as an intermediary layer to facilitate the exchange of computing power and FOL token between FOL client and IPFS/Filecoin nodes accumulating Filecoin.

● IPFS/Filecoin Nodes are owned by Folder Protocol. This group of nodes provides computing power as a part of the Filecoin network to engage in mining activity.