Moderator : Anderson Sima, Executive Editor, Foresight News
Guest: Jessie Dai, Co-founder of CESS Network
Moderator: Hello everyone, I am Anderson, the executive editor of Foresight News . Before introducing today's guests, I would like to share two observations.
First of all, Web3 has been inseparable from the concept of decentralization of blockchain since its birth. At present, the main application of blockchain is as a distributed ledger technology, mainly used for transactions and asset management. But if we look deeper into the ecological architecture of blockchain, we will find that the underlying layer is the data layer than the accounting technology. The current mainstream data storage services are mainly provided by Internet giants, such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and domestic Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, etc., which are all centralized storage solutions.
The reason why blockchain technology can give birth to Web3 is precisely due to its decentralized and tamper-proof characteristics. Similarly, at the lower level of data storage, the concept of decentralized storage has also emerged. Although centralized storage brings convenience, it also has the risk of single point failure. For example, when a cloud service provider has a problem, all industries that rely on the service, whether it is finance, aviation or transportation, will be affected.
Today we are going to discuss CESS, a project that has performed outstandingly in the decentralized storage field. We are honored to invite Jessie Dai, co-founder of CESS, to our show. First, please let Jessie give a brief self-introduction.
Jessie: Hello everyone, I am Jessie Dai, co-founder of CESS. I am very happy to be here at Foresight News Space. Let me first briefly introduce my career experience.
My relationship with blockchain began in 2012, when I first came into contact with Bitcoin through the research and development team of wearable electronic devices. From the end of 2013 to the beginning of 2014, I officially entered this industry, starting as an individual investor. During this period, I came into contact with a large number of excellent public chain technology teams and consulted many well-known public chain founders. Although I am not a technical person, I always believe that blockchain is a technology with long-term prospects.
After experiencing the big bear market in 2018, I spent a whole year conducting industry research and visiting many technical experts. In the generally sluggish market environment, these technical experts who truly understand decentralization still firmly believe in the future of the industry. Through research, we have come to a key conclusion: For blockchain to truly develop, it must achieve breakthroughs in three core areas - decentralized computing power, decentralized storage, and decentralized content distribution. These three are the infrastructure for building the next generation of the Internet.
Based on our understanding at the time, we believed that decentralized storage and content distribution were the areas with the greatest commercial potential. This is because data privacy and sovereignty protection are rigid needs, and this area requires a sound infrastructure to support it. It was during this exploration process that I met the other two co-founders, Joseph Li and Nick.
Our technical team has deep experience: Nick is an early core member of Oracle and was responsible for marketing; Joseph Li is an expert in distributed storage and intellectual property protection. Since the establishment of CESS in 2019, we have been deeply involved in this field for six years.
Host: Thank you Jessie for your wonderful sharing. Actually, there is a lot of information in it. Let me give you a brief review. The first thing is that Jessie entered Crypto very early. We can now call it the ancient period, which was from 2012. Let me just say a few words here. Did Jessie go mining at that time? Did ASIC mining machines appear at that time?
Jessie: Indeed, we have stepped on many "pitfalls" on the road of Bitcoin development. For example, I once invested in a baked cat mining machine with a friend, and I also personally experienced the incident in Sichuan where the mining machine was washed away by the flood - my mining machine was also among them. It can be said that we have personally participated in and witnessed various typical experiences in the early days of this industry.
Moderator: Web3 is indeed an emerging industry, but Jessie is already a senior veteran in this field. Many listeners may not be familiar with the "Baked Cat" mentioned in the discussion just now - this just shows how small the group that was exposed to Bitcoin was at that time. Those who know these stories are the earliest explorers in the industry.
Jessie shared with us an insightful industry observation: For Web3 to achieve real innovation, it must be reconstructed at the three basic layers of computing power, data storage, and content distribution. This structural thinking was formed during the industry winter of 2018 (when the price of Bitcoin was only around $3,000), showing extraordinary foresight. It is particularly noteworthy that the core members of the team include experts in traditional technology fields such as early members of Oracle. This composite background has laid a solid foundation for the project.
Now, let's ask Jessie to give a detailed introduction to CESS's project positioning and development goals. As a pioneer in the decentralized storage track, what are CESS's unique innovations and competitive advantages? Please ask Jessie to elaborate on this for us.
Jessie: Thank you for the introduction. With the rapid development of the Internet and AI technology, we are facing new challenges brought about by the explosive growth of data: how to effectively manage, store and protect data has become an important issue for the whole society. Under the traditional centralized platform model, the ownership and control of data are completely in the hands of the platform, and users face serious problems such as data leakage, tampering, deletion and privacy infringement.
In this context, the importance of decentralized storage has become increasingly prominent. We believe that in the digital economy, data is the "oil" of the new era, and the key to ensuring data security and user rights lies in the breakthrough of decentralized storage technology. The core question is: How to establish a trusted storage system? Is authorization required? Can a completely decentralized trust mechanism be achieved?
Decentralized storage technology has developed to the third generation. From early peer-to-peer storage, to professional storage protocols such as Filecoin, to the current need to make data storable, accessible, usable, shareable, and profitable. The main bottleneck facing the current storage system is that it cannot provide a user experience comparable to centralized services such as Amazon AWS and Google Cloud, which seriously restricts the possibility of its large-scale application.
CESS is positioned to create a more secure, private and efficient data management solution. We have built a Layer 1 public chain system that includes wireless storage and millisecond execution, but we emphasize more on being a service provider, providing data service solutions for enterprises, governments and individuals. Through secure, transparent and traceable technology, we are committed to building a solid data infrastructure for enterprise-level applications such as AI, RWA, and DeSci.
After six years of research and development, our goal is to build a decentralized storage system that can support large-scale commercial applications. Through encryption layering and sharding storage technology, data sovereignty and privacy are protected, data resources can be safely circulated and monetized, and the separation of data usage rights and ownership is supported. At the same time, it provides infrastructure for collaborative learning between AI models, and enables the sharing of training results while protecting the privacy of original data. We believe that these technological innovations will lay the foundation for the development of the future data economy, truly realize users' control over data sovereignty, and promote the collaborative evolution of AI models. This is the vision that CESS is committed to achieving.
Moderator: Thank you Jessie for your wonderful sharing. Through Jessie's explanation, we have a deep understanding of CESS's technical vision and industry insights in the data storage layer, including how to achieve decentralized storage, data call mechanism, data sovereignty and other core issues. These are fundamentally different from traditional Web2. At the same time, CESS is also committed to solving key challenges such as data performance optimization and privacy protection, such as achieving "data available but invisible" through zero-knowledge proof (zk) technology to ensure that users always have data ownership.
Now let's explore this topic in more depth. Although Foresight News has previously reported on the technical features of CESS, as a non-technical audience, I still have questions about some professional concepts. Could Jessie explain the core technological innovations of CESS, such as decentralized object storage technology? What practical effects can these technologies bring? Compared with other decentralized storage projects, what are the unique advantages of CESS? Jessie, please explain it to us in detail.
Jessie: CESS's technological development has always adhered to the concept of combining engineering practice with technological innovation. We realize that although pure geek technology is forward-looking, it often faces challenges in usability and ease of use when serving large-scale commercial applications. To this end, we pioneered the integration of front-end academic research and engineering practice to ensure that technological innovation can both break through boundaries and be truly applied.
Our decentralized object storage (DOS) system is a typical representative of this concept. It is not only the product of technological breakthroughs, but also the crystallization of engineering thinking. Just like Amazon hides the complex backend system through a simple user interface, DOS provides users with a very simple entry point. Through standardized API and RPC interfaces, developers can easily call our powerful underlying storage capabilities. This design stems from our deep understanding of the industry: real technological innovation should lower the threshold of use, rather than raise technical barriers.
In the field of content distribution, the decentralized CDN network we built effectively solves the core pain points of traditional centralized services. Through a distributed storage architecture, our system is able to resist DDoS attacks and single point failure risks. Combined with the intelligent routing optimization achieved by blockchain nodes, video buffering time can be reduced.
Particularly worth mentioning is our recoverable storage proof technology. Through encrypted sharding storage technology, data is securely stored in different nodes to ensure physical isolation. The system will continuously verify the integrity of the data and automatically repair damaged copies. The anti-fraud design combined with error correction code and zero-knowledge proof can effectively prevent node collusion and fraud. Even in extreme cases, such as a regional disaster causing 65% of nodes to crash, the system can complete data reconstruction in a very short time. This core technology, which took 6 years to develop, has been rigorously verified in multiple enterprise-level application scenarios.
Moderator: Thank you Jessie for your in-depth and easy-to-understand explanation. Indeed, technological innovation must ultimately return to the essence of solving practical problems. Now let's turn our attention to market competition. The decentralized storage track has both pioneers such as Filecoin and innovators such as Arweave. In this highly competitive field, what are the main aspects of CESS's differentiated advantages? Please ask Jessie to analyze CESS's unique value proposition for us.
Jessie: When it comes to data services, I think in the Web3 and the upcoming AI era, it cannot be simply defined as "storage". CESS is positioned to provide a complete underlying data service solution, just like Amazon provided a complete set of cloud services in the Web2 era. We focus on the full life cycle management of data, including availability, traceability, callability and liquidity.
We are leading the development of a standard protocol for decentralized storage, bringing together multiple universities and experts in the field of decentralized storage. This work has been going on for more than a year. Once completed, we will promote this set of standards to various countries. This is why we actively participate in the work of the Global Government Blockchain Association to understand the needs of governments in various countries for data infrastructure.
Recently, our solution was recommended to the Bahrain government together with Amazon's solution for the reconstruction of its Internet infrastructure. It is worth mentioning that we obtained the US BMA assessment certification through the public chain solution, while Amazon was certified through the private chain solution. This proves that the maturity of our technology has reached the enterprise-level application standard.
As a Web3 enterprise, we are able to mobilize the power of the community and use distributed resources to build a network infrastructure that is not inferior to that of technology giants. Although the mainnet has not yet been officially launched, the service performance of the current test network is comparable to that of a centralized system. We are about to launch an upgraded version of DeCloud, and we hope that users can experience the differentiated advantages of Web3 products from it.
In terms of standard setting, we actively participate in the Hong Kong DePIN assessment and provide advice for the DePIN activities held by the US Congress. We believe that underlying infrastructure projects require long-term investment and cannot be judged solely by short-term token performance. With the development of concepts such as RWA, the security of data storage will become increasingly important. Recently, a friend in Kyrgyzstan asked how to safely store RWA data representing thousands of tons of gold assets.
In the future, as AI develops and geopolitics change, decentralized infrastructure will face greater demand. Enterprises need solutions that can both protect data sovereignty and meet regional compliance requirements. This is exactly the value that CESS is committed to providing - allowing every user to securely control their own data assets.
Moderator: Thank you Jessie for your in-depth sharing from macro to meso perspectives. Let's review a few core points: Jessie believes that the development of the decentralized storage track cannot be limited to a single project, but needs to stand from a global perspective and pay attention to the overall context of government policies and industry evolution. With the development of the times, from RWA to AI big models, the demand for data storage in different fields is becoming increasingly diversified, and even different regions are showing differentiated demand characteristics.
Based on this understanding, CESS actively participates in the formulation of industry standards and cooperates with multiple organizations to promote protocol standardization. This is like the unification of charging interfaces or railway gauges. Without industry consensus standards, it is difficult to achieve true interoperability. Standard formulation is a key link in promoting the development of the entire track.
After an in-depth discussion of CESS's technical architecture, business model, and industry vision, I would like to ask Jessie: With so many advantages, what is the biggest challenge currently facing you? Is it the complexity of technology research and development? The difficulty of commercialization? Or the cultivation of market acceptance? Jessie, please share the main difficulties you are currently facing from the perspective of challenges.
Jessie: This track does face many challenges, which I think are mainly reflected in three key dimensions:
First of all, there is the difficulty in technical development. Decentralized data storage is one of the most challenging technical directions in the blockchain field, because data services cannot tolerate any mistakes. Enterprise users have extremely strict requirements for data storage, and once a system is selected, it often means a long-term commitment. This is completely different from simple smart contract development, and it requires real technical strength and vision to change the industry landscape.
The second is the complexity of market promotion. Even if you develop an excellent product, it is still a huge challenge to get users to accept and use it. Our co-founders participated in Oracle's early market expansion and knew that continuous customization is required from product development to actual application. This high-cost promotion process requires the team to be prepared for a long-term battle. We have invested 6 years and it is estimated that it will take another 5 years to complete the development of the underlying technology.
Finally, there is the requirement for the continuity of funds and resources. Building a decentralized storage network requires a large amount of hardware resources, including bandwidth, storage devices, and online time. This requires not only continuous financial support, but also the participation of the community in the construction. When the technology encounters a bottleneck, it may take a long time to find a solution, which is a severe test for the stability of the team and the financial endurance.
These challenges determine that this track is not suitable for teams pursuing short-term returns, but rather requires builders who truly have long-term planning and technical beliefs.
Moderator: Thank you Jessie for your wonderful sharing. Indeed, the decentralized storage track faces multiple challenges: from the difficulty of technical development to product adaptability, from user migration costs to customized service requirements, to the complexity of market promotion and the pressure of long-term investment. These are the key problems that need to be overcome.
Due to time constraints, we will discuss a related topic at the end. It is understood that CESS completed TGE today and went online on some CEXs, including plans to land on Binance Alpha. But before our Space started, there was news that CESS postponed the launch time on Binance Alpha. Jessie, would you mind explaining the specific situation? For example, the reason for the postponement or the new schedule? Or do we need to wait for the official notification from Binance?
Jessie: Thank you for the host's question. Regarding the TGE and exchange listing arrangements, we always follow the communication consensus with various trading platforms. At present, some of the launch plans have indeed been adjusted, which is a decision made after consultation between the project party and the exchange. For the specific time arrangement, we recommend that the official announcement shall prevail. The CESS team always adheres to the principle of transparency and openness, and any important progress will be synchronized to the community through official channels as soon as possible. We understand the community's concern about the progress of the project, and thank everyone for their patience. I believe that the exchange will issue a formal notice at the appropriate time. The team is currently focusing on promoting the mainnet and technical optimization to ensure a more complete product experience for the community.
Moderator: Today, many listeners are paying special attention to the progress of CESS's TGE. Regarding the specific arrangements of the exchange, it is recommended that you continue to pay attention to the official announcements of Binance and CESS. Let's return to today's core topic - the future development of the decentralized storage track. As Jessie shared, the CESS team upholds the craftsman spirit of "six years of hard work" and has a five-year technical planning blueprint for the future. The mainnet and decentralized storage services are about to be launched. We sincerely invite all developers, RWA and AI practitioners to continue to pay attention to the development of this underlying data infrastructure.
Once again, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Jessie for her wonderful sharing, and thank all the listeners for their support of Foresight News . Let us look forward to our next gathering! Finally, please allow Jessie to say goodbye to everyone.
Jessie: Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to participate in today's discussion. The development path of Web3 is long and full of possibilities. Although this field has been around for more than a decade, we believe that there are still many more decades waiting for us to explore in the future.
In addition to participating in market transactions, I suggest that you pay more attention to technological innovation itself. As the underlying infrastructure continues to improve, more breakthrough application scenarios will inevitably emerge - whether it is a decentralized social platform, communication system, or other services that are closer to the real needs of users. These innovations can not only inject vitality into the industry, but may also bring inspiration to your future entrepreneurial path.
Let us look forward to the fact that when decentralized storage and other infrastructure mature, a more open and autonomous digital ecosystem will flourish. Thank you for your persistence and exploration. I believe that in the evolution of Web3, each of us can find our own opportunities and value.
Moderator: Thank you Jessie for your wonderful sharing. As she emphasized, the construction of Web3 infrastructure is the key prerequisite for promoting large-scale applications in the industry. Today's discussion has given us a clearer view of the development prospects and technological breakthroughs of the decentralized storage track.
This Space live broadcast has come to a successful conclusion. We sincerely thank all listeners for their enthusiastic participation and support. Foresight News will continue to bring you more high-quality industry content. Let us look forward to the next in-depth exchange. Goodbye!
